.....HTFU....**

092214
beloved LEGS...

I am a mess.....this week I have felt like.....somehow I have fallen in love with you all over again.....how do you do that?  You bring me down, you bring me up.....you kill me just to save me...........I am afraid that its just a delusion.....a mixture of romanticizing the past, and these passing exchanges we have shared the last couple of weeks......oh but how they have made my heart swell.....

......lately I have been having this vision of your face...the stars spell out your features while a ghostly picture of you lays in between....I have it when its hard....during training....or when I am awoken by a nightmare in the middle of the night...or when I feel so very alone.....it both haunts me and comforts me...

....I am afraid that I will lose you...this strong long distance passion between us gives me this unbearable anxiety.... because I have everything to lose.....it seems to be a conditioned response....whenever I feel happy and content LIFE comes in and destroys it.....

.....I was quoted on a public forum the other day....saying......"When I see weakness in a person, I just want to hurt them."......

I said that.  I honestly can't believe I said that.  I sound like a sociopath.  Obviously this statement was made in a certain context....a conversation about boxing.  I said I don't like to hurt people, unless they show me weakness in the ring.  When I see weakness in a person, I just want to hurt them.

I spent the whole day thinking about that one sentence, because honestly it scared me that I popped off and said that. Ya, okay, I said it in a certain context, but I started to wonder if it was maybe true in all parts of my life.......

......when I think about weakness I think about...the word strong.....

Honestly I am sick of hearing it.  I hear it all the time every single day for years on end.  People tell me to be strong.  People tell me I am strong.  Men tell me I am the strongest women they know.  Or if anybody is strong its you.  Its the one word that people use to describe me and the one word I use to describe myself.  I think about being strong all the time.  I tell myself to be strong.  Strong, the word, is so meaningful to me I have actually considered tattooing it on myself.....

.....As I was driving down the road today.....I was thinking about strength. 

....I started to think about why people keep saying that to me.  Do I really stand out more than others as strong?  Is that the only thing they can think to say?  Is it the word they think I need to hear...a form of encouragement?

My life isn't any harder than anybody else's..I truly believe that and.......I choose not to compete battle for battle.....but I was wondering exactly why it seems to be the one word I hear all the time.....

....several different circumstances reeled through my head like a film of times, where......my strength was probably hurtful to people that I care about....people that I love...

...but there is always in the back of my mind, a test that I give people....and the test is....if we were facing the end of the world....who wouldn't give up on me, who wouldn't give up on surviving.....family, friends, or not....if I ever feel like the person before me would give up.....then I know where they stand in my every day life....because.....for us....for me and you.....every single day is a survival situation....every single day is LIFE OR DEATH.....

.....the strength that I project is actually a bone chilling ability I have learned over the years.  Its a behavior, a pattern.....when things get hard.....I let the pain come into me....I embrace the burn....the heartache....I let it break me down a little.....sometimes I cry....a lot of times I get angry.....but most the time.....I let myself love it....I accept it and feed off of it.....I rub salt in the wound, grit my teeth and use the pain to keep my mind off how tired I feel.......

....Is that hard core?  I guess in my mind I just don't see what other option I have.  I could wince, cry, beg, I could lay down and give up......but where will that get me?  If I keep moving...than at least Ill be further away from where it was I obtained the injury.....maybe I just run....maybe that is all I do- run away....run with my mouth....write my words.....but even running is still trying.....and weakness is giving up......

....30 years on this earth and I have to say the most admirable, beautiful, amazing feats I have ever seen or read or heard about  committed by a human being is when they didn't give up despite all that was against them.  The stories of my ancestors, the lives of my Grandparents.....they just never gave up....

....my eyes are open....I watch everything around me every single day.....it seems like its harder to witness these feats of perseverance.....I don't see or know a lot of people that just refuse to give in these days.....it makes it hard for me to always stay motivated.....and I don't feel very often that I have comrades beside me.....

....on really dark days I sometimes think about joining the weakness, because it would be easier....and I would finally have some rest.....but I always stop short of crossing over...a force greater than me always holds me back and....something deep down inside of me refuses to live that way.....

....I won't be ashamed of my words.....because....when I do see weakness in people I do want to hurt them......because giving up is the worst kind of behavior.....it disgusts me, and I wonder how they can live with themselves day in and day out.....to me.....giving up is denying the humanity that has gotten us this far down the line.....giving up makes a person sub-human.....

I am strong, because I have no other choice.  My choice is strong, because strong is LIFE.....I choose to live.....because weakness is as good as dead......

.....HTFU.....

.....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife.....**