Grind

Do you like the results you're getting?

Is your life the one you imagined?

To quote "Pumping Iron" the wolf on the top of the hill is not as hungry as the one climbing his way up.

Learning to be content is anathema to progress and development.
Deciding to accept circumstance as beyond your control is the death knell of crafting the life you desire out of the fodder and material around you.

I've been feeling some serious anxiety as of late.
With my **** and ******* coming up, some work pressure, and some other likely changes....I stop. I let go.
I ask what I have to lose?
Money?
I don't care about money.
My job?
I'll find another one. I always have.
My girl?
I would and will miss her but she won't be the first and she likely will not be the last.

I accept that come what may, I will survive. It will be painful and it will be uncomfortable.
But necessity is the father of change.
It will finally force my hand in some key areas of my life.
When I stop my emotional response to things looming on the horizon, when I ask myself what I fear:
Losing my job.
Losing her.
Can I find another job?
Yes.
Can I find another good woman?
Yes.

Will it take work and time and will there be doubt and strife and emotional turmoil?
Yes.
But then, those are the components which make a man.
The thousand yard stare is not something you can fake.
It comes from time in the brink.
It comes from the late nights, the fights, the arrests, the crushing failures.....keep going.
It comes from the months sweating making it to pay day. It comes from the emotional holocaust of divorce.
It comes from learning the hard way and sometimes even that's not enough the first or the second or fifth time.

Not every day will be leaps and bounds of progress.
Some days, winning is just sticking to your guns and even though you feel soul-rending doubt, you don't reverse your decision. Sometimes, just not losing ground and not deciding to begin backtracking is winning.

I remember after the separation, sleeping on the floor, no heat, not a stick of furniture to my name. I walked away with nothing and I would watch redbox movies on my work laptop because that was all I had aside from my clothes and training gear. It was as pathetic as it was necessary. I would remind myself it could be worse, after all, there was no mortgage and no children. Not even a pet to sweat or feel bad about.
It's all about perspective. Sometimes seeing the big picture does nothing to mitigate the misery of what your life has been reduced to but fuck it, grind out the misery, it can only last for so long and eventually night must give way to day.

I could have acquiesced and gone back to the safety of the logistics of not having to worry about money or bills or any of that first world shit. She would take it all back and do it for me....but then I was the whipping boy for her emotional volatility and increasingly destructive emotional benders...and I remember why I left. I had my foibles and failures as a husband to be sure, but that's not a reason to stay in an emotionally toxic relationship no matter if it is bound by a fucking sheet of paper.
And my freedom was the price....and....it's expensive because it is fucking worth it.