I love my therapist, and it’s gonna suck if I have to find a new one. 😦 Today we discussed various types of co-dependancy issues I have, as well as a means to describe and re-set my boundaries at work and at Casa do GB. It was good to get everything off my chest, literally and at least tell someone everything that has been going through my head. But the truth is there, I need to find a means to explain to someone, with language barriers, my dual nature and why I’m allowed to do the stuff at the house I’m allowed to do. I realized going into this, that there was going to be a culture clash, of sorts, and here it is. My Professore allows me the freedom given to the male members of the team. I get to arrive to and leave the house at my choosing, whether someone is there or not. I’m one of the guys. The new guys don’t quite get this, because it seems this is something that girls aren’t allowed to do, unless it’s a girlfriend or a wife, and when they do, they aren’t part of the “men’s space”. It’s really starting to make me wish that things could go back to the way they were before pan-ams. I don’t feel like I’m one of the guys anymore, I feel like I’m being segregated out to the girl’s space. I don’t like it, especially that I have this distinct dis-like for girls.

We also talked about my ability to let things go, and we set up a course of action to help me achieve the level of disconnect from things that I want. He recommended I take a vacation from the boys, which, I’ve been doing this week, and start setting up my boundaries, as needed. I have a list of things to do, to do that, and once I’m ready to head back to the house I’ll start putting those into place.

I also have a better idea on how to slowly disconnect myself from people so they can solve their own problems. I’ve realized that I’ve become an enabler, of sorts, in a few capacities, and it’s time that I put the limits on doing that.

With that said, I think the trip to the mountains with the guys this weekend will be good. I get out in my natural habitat, and they have to deal with my separation from them. It’s veil-walking time.

Sometimes, I have to sit and go back through the emails various people have sent me. Ya know, the ones that say “I love you” or “You mean so much to me” or something along those lines. They’re the things that sit in place of a physical hug, a meaningful smile or eyes with fire dancing in them as I look into them. They get me through days that start like this, where I wake up feeling run down. On the drive in, I started thinking about all the things pointing to me focusing on loving and appreciating myself more, and living up to my own expectations instead of others. Then I looked at how I’m living right now, and coming to the conclusion that I’m working on living up to the expectations of others, specifically my boss. I ram my head into the wall because I listen to her words and take them to heart, like I don’t do enough and realize I’m slipping back into the cycle of self-abuse that I broke free from years ago. I work so hard at trying to be what others need me to be at any given moment, and lose myself and sacrifice my own health for that of others. I need to break that cycle again, this time before I get too deep into it. I need to take some healing time for myself, get my arm worked on and keep the scar tissue from forming too badly. And learning to say no, instead of keeping silent in agreement.

Starting with my trip to Cali, I made the decision to start working with letting things go. I’m one of those people that has to have things scheduled, because if I don’t, I don’t get things done. My Professore told me once, that I complicate things. It was one of those off-comments that caused me to turn it over and over in my head and realize, “Well, it’s true.” I do complicate things. As much as I’ve prided myself on being fairly simple, easy to please, easy to understand…even though everyone else seemed to complicate that….I try to explain myself too much. I don’t just go with the flow. And over the last month, everything from things my chiropractic goddess would say, down to my horrorscopes, were all about simplifying things. So, I decided to start. I had two days in Cali with absolutely nothing planned. No hotel, no transportation, nothing. So I took care of that at the last minute and just let things slide into place as they moved. Granted, the hotel I ended up at on Wednesday night was not the best place in the world (and now I know which hotels to pay attention to, in that area). It’s starting to settle into my head. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been splitting my living quarters between the fight house (full of Brazilians) and my Scotsman’s house. Living with Brazilians is an interesting experience, especially given that they’re all fighters. It’s a really laid-back atmosphere and forces me to relax and just be in a moment. We train when we feel the pull, do other things when we feel like going in that direction, or just sit on our asses all day. It’s helping, I’m starting to get my focus back, even though I’m burned out on training and taking a break from that. But I don’t feel rushed to go anywhere or do anything in particular. We wake up when we need to, there’s only one alarm clock in the house, and it’s no where for me to hear it when it goes off. It’s almost like a part-time vacation for me. Now, to work on the social part of me…

I don’t know when this started happening, I can’t figure if it’s from working retail and having only an hour or less to scarf down lunch, or the result of having lived with a control freak who decided he controlled when I ate and what I ate. But the fact remains, when I eat, I eat like it’s my last meal for the next 5 days. I scarf down food, and oftentimes too much to the point I’m ill. My ET commented once, while we were out in LA, that I wasn’t enjoying my dinner, which wasn’t true, but it sure looked that way.

At any rate, I went on a juice fast last weekend, to try and get past my 124.5 plateau and it brought home a few things, and let me reset this whole eating thing. I succeeded in getting down to 122, as well as realizing the issue with my stomach irritability after lunch. When I drink shakes for lunch, and eat a salad sometime around 4.30, I don’t have a problem with digestion. Which brings in the other observation. I have no concept of portion size (hey look, I have something else in common with most of America). Granted, I’ve always been big on taking home leftovers from eating out, I’ve never been able to train myself to not have seconds. Being on this diet has made me aware of that, as well as the fact that I eat small dinners, small breakfasts and an even smaller lunch, with a protien bar and a shake in the middle there somewhere, and I have yet to be painfully hungry when it comes to eating. My worst habit is when we eat Indian, I was so proud of myself for my break-fast meal, when we went out for Indian and I took home enough for lunch the next day. On top of that, I’m actually feeling a lot better….with exception to yesterday, but that’s because my schedule caused me to miss a meal/snack. I’m really liking where I’m at, and as much as I hate dropping weight (the fight after this one has a different weight class), I’ll be going back up to 125-130 when I’m done with this. I don’t like not being able to lift weights, which is the other side-benefit to all of this…I’m feeling the desire to be more active, and I’m ready to go out and do things earlier in the morning. Maybe the military would have done me some good earlier in my life, having it fairly structured is really doing me a favour. Now, to just come up with more things I can eat besides and Arby’s salad and an Odwalla Super Protein Shake (don’t always have time to go to Whole Foods for the lunch bar).

My horrorscope from Tarot.com, today, was talking about a past conversation, and how I’m at the point that I can evaluate it, and put it away. I can’t say that there’s any particular conversation, however, there is a long string of events. Over my trip to my parents (what I didn’t feel like turning the video camera on for, even though I should have), I kept coming back to my issues with the male figures in my life. Those have always been messed up, somehow. Yes, this is Freudian, but it does stem back to my early relationship with my father. That revelation is quite blaringly obvious. But, my dad and I are on a much better plane right now, and I can put all of the issues that we had, while I was growing up, away. It’s the relationships that followed, that I’m having difficulty with, again. My mind always wanders to two in particular. The abusive one with D, and the fucked-up beyond any usefulness that followed with AOLs beloved “Bard”. Granted, the latter is just an irritating itch, but I’m still trying to figure out why it itches so much. I know I still have a great deal of anger towards D, more to the point, I want to mangle his body beyond all visable recognition. I don’t hate him, I don’t despise him. I just want to guarantee that he’s no longer part of the human race, I guess. I want him completely dead to me. So, I guess that means concocting another ritual, as a means to deal with him and put him further away from me.

But, I will say, the highlight of last week was waltzing with my dad to Lara’s Theme. That made me happy, especially as he let go of his need to control whether or not my steps were right, and just let them come as they may. It was flawless. My other happy point, was getting to talk with my Bitch for a couple of hours. I really miss him right now, but he has promised to be there for me while I spaz for the next couple of months. My Professore told me he believes I have a good change of medaling at Pan-Ams, so I’m going to go for it. Those will be in March, out in Cali. And, he wants me to fight sometime in March or April, MMA. So, I have my mum calling to wake me up every day, my dad has taken up the slack, to make sure I’m out of bed by 8 so I can be at the gym early. I’ll have to actually start weight training again, and working on my stand-up. The down-side, I’m getting sick.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention…I did a Texas Two-Step with a WWII vet, who fought at Battle of the Bulge. 🙂

Scorpio for this week:

Don’t feel bad if you come from a dysfunctional family. Studies done by The Institute for the Study of Universal Addiction indicate that 97 percent of all families are dysfunctional. You should, however, feel bad if you pass up the opportunities you now have to heal the ravages caused by your dysfunctional family. Here’s a good place to start: By trying to dissolve your habit of feeling victimized, damaged, or burdened by the people with whom you shared your original home, you could release yourself from a curse you’ve been casting on yourself–and magically set in motion overdue changes in your other family members.

FreeWill Astrology

Heh, I don’t come from a dysfunctional family, but my extended family is the most dysfunctional thing this side of WinME (which, I just found out that my box had no where near enough memory to run ME, and I got the most that Dell would send me). With that said, my parents and I have been having a blast. The other day I went to watch my dad’s music group reherse, and I have video of that up on my myspace page. We had a blast. Today, I went with my mum for a spa day. It was her first massage and pedicure, she enjoyed it. 🙂 Now, to see how my brother is doing.

I finally went to yoga tonight. I have found my new home. I spent the most of class with my eyes closed, and Don was there with me, guiding me through the poses. My instructor’s class set-up and voice are just like his, he even has the same walk. I even made a discovery about myself. My hip issues are not the internal struggle between the masculine and feminine, it’s an internal issue in forgiving my relationship with my father, and the men in my life. My dad and I didn’t have a good relationship up till recently, in fact, it was outright violent at some points. Of course, it didn’t help that the gender roles in my household were totally messed up. My dad was the cold nurturer and my mum was the nurturing bread-winner. But it was a nice revelation. Now to resolve it.