Value-less.

What happens when it’s all gone, taken away like the heart in your chest? When what you once were is no more? How do we keep advancing in the face of pointlessness? When we identify ourselves as something of value, whether it be a job title, an achievement, our style, our spirituality, service work, when that "thing" goes away? If we choose it to go away because we are now devoted to another definition, then that seems to be a smoother transition. What happens when we don’t choose it, when it is taken from us?

The body has an expiration date, something we were made aware of as soon as we became aware. Death is a lingering curtain on our stage waiting to drop at any moment. Some get the slow closing of the final goodbye, many get an immediate shut. The curtain closing isn’t the problem, it is when the physical self defines us and it is when this thing starts to expire more than grow. 

Aesthetically pleasing bodies are definitely something to look at. They grab our attention. They depict health which equates to advancement in the population, biologically our purpose on this earth. When we want to attract a mate and find no other possible way but to be aesthetically pleasing ourselves, then what do we do but take to what society shares as the best way to look attractive by "working out" and “eating right,” both noble causes.

What happens when the goals of gym and nutrition turn to consumption of us, not the other way around? When our behaviors consume us because they are now us? When the gym is not an extra thing, but THE thing? When supplements and nutrition and the obsession behind their engagement is not in addition to, but is? What then? What’s worse, is when it starts to pass, when we no longer get the results, people are no longer giving us the credit, or we ourselves look in the mirror to see the physical shell of the person we ONCE were, or thought we were, or people told us we were. 

This train is broken, headed off the tracks. No identity, no tracks, and therefore chaos. 

The mind races at this point. Whether it be just one missed gym session, the angst of eating food out of place or appropriate time. Emotions seem independent of logic because logic knows better but cannot seem to pump the break to this out-of-control ride. The kids are all sitting up, screaming in their seats, enjoying the thrill, all as the roller-coaster overlooks the plunge into an early grave of desperation, shallowness, and sadness for the person no longer available. 

"No mamm, his first love, himself, was to blame. He could not make room for anyone else because the beliefs and habits that HAD to be completed in the RIGHT way were too much." 

The roller-coaster crashes, the kids cry, the family frustrated. The man, his beliefs, led him astray. Is all he wanted was love. He couldn’t love himself enough to be, he needed more.

We all find value in something outside of us, but why aren’t we enough? We are we so inundated with the need for a person, place, thing, perception, outside of us that we will destroy our own contentment to achieve it? 

I am the guiltiest of parties, for I have lost most of my life to my own obsessions. I am over the grief period and now on to the period of appreciation. The struggle of “old behaviors,” or the remorse of another “thin” comment made by a fellow gymgoer. I am remiss when a session at the gym was not as “hard,” as it once was, or that week I was unable to get all my own expected lifts in, or a holiday interrupts my eating schedule. 

Grief and facade versus acceptance. 

Am I better now? More aware maybe. Maybe this brings underlying things to the surface, forcing me to deal versus cover up. Dealing is hard. I want to escape. I want to rely on the external self to talk for me, to tell everyone that I AM OK. Otherwise, I have to say it, and that is exactly what everyone who is broken says. I am not broken, just chipped, right? 

I am not broken, flawed maybe. Flawed from the expectation I set for myself. It is a part of me. The funny thing is that I have made many decisions in my life for myself that have resulted in consequences. What makes me think that I know what is best for me with that kind of history. I have this imbalance in thought process that destroys my contentment, my ability to be. I want to be. I want to sit and be OK as me. I want to relax without having to meet the criteria to do so. I want what I think others have, not all, but my perception of a few. 

A tale as old as time.

I used to want riches, now I want peace. Peace, love, knowledge, challenges of consciousness. I guess. I have the last one. Living a life outside of what I knew for most of it is definitely a challenge. One that I can’t help but snicker at from time to time. 

MMMM….. Snickers!

Nope not until I ……

Damn relapse.

The meticulous thoughts erupt. I have them documented, I have them published. They are exposed in hopes to help another. Click Here.