Another amazingly New Year!
I don't expect anyone to actually still be reading this thing. In fact, I don't rightly remember the last time that I wrote in it. But a funny thing happened to me this morning that just gave me the urge to record the happenings of my life this New Year's....because by leaving it here I can look back in the future and see that life does indeed get better, even if you thought that it never could, or that it never would.
This morning I got some spam on my livejournal. But the spam brought to my attention an entry I had made on NYE the year 2006. Four years ago. It's absolutely astounding how much my life has changed since then. In fact, it's absolutely astounding how much my life has changed over the last year.
At that point in time, I had gone through a year where I had broken up with the only boyfriend I had ever had, and I was battling depression, transitions in relationships with my friends, a weight problem I'd had since puberty, and probably other things I can't even remember.
Rereading that entry with a perspective of four years of experience, learning, growth, it just made me want to put down in some form of permanence what my life is like right now, so that in the future I can look back and see what it was that made me me, the events that transpired to make me into the person that I am today. Which is a completely different person from the girl that wrote that entry.
In the intervening years, much has happened. That girl that broke up with Steve and was left crushed by the whole experience decided to get into something really seriously that she'd only tried and flirted with. Kickboxing. Signing up for that one leisure guide class has changed the course of that girl's entire life....
That girl went to that first day of class, met Olivia Gerula, and though she might not realize it for a long time to come, took the first steps on the path that would make her into someone I am very proud to be right now.
Don't get me wrong, my evolution isn't done. I'm always transforming, I feel. But I don't think I'll ever change into someone completely unrecognizable as the person I am today. I'll just continue to learn and grow, evolve as people tend to do.
But the person sitting here writing this journal entry in 2011 is such a different person than wrote the journal entry that NYE of 2006 that I can't even believe she was me, or I was her, however you want to call it.
Getting into kickboxing put me in touch with a couple of people that would push me, inspire me, build up my confidence and change me in ways that I couldn't even imagine back then. Between them and the chiropractic clinic I would eventually be forced to go to by my family to treat my headaches, my life has improved drastically!
I met Olivia, through her Peter, and through Peter, Lisa. I pursued kicboxing with a dedication I'd never pursued anything with before. Peter convinced me to try my hand at boxing as well, and actually get in the ring, which I did for the first time in March of 2009, successfully losing 25 pounds between the day I first weighed in during the pre fight sign up meeting and the day of weigh ins of my fight. It took me out of having an actual fight, putting me in an exhibition instead, but it was the first time that I'd ever succesfully lost weight since I started putting it on as a teenager. And to this day, I have not seen the number again that I saw that first day I officially weighed in at Pan Am Boxing.
It was a combination of the hard core training and the nutrition I was learning at my chiropractic clinic. But it worked, and it keeps working. So far that overweight, unhappy woman who had been a fat teenager in high school has gone from being about 220 pounds to hovering in the 150's and trying desperately to lose that last fifteen. They say it's the toughest.
I've fought in another exhibition fight. I became the first female champion of Pan Am's Fight Club. I don't recall NYE of 2007, but I know NYE 2008, 2009 and 2010 were all spent at Apocalypse, whichever bar was holding it for our crowd. I've gone from having nearly no friends to having a number of people I can rely on. A rather large number of people I call friends that I chat with at least on a weekly basis, and a handful of some of the best friends a girl could ever have, who more than adaquetly replace the ones that walked out of my life without even telling me they were going, instead just turning their back and ignoring me, something that they knew would hurt more than anything.
That girl is gone, she's become an amateur boxer, a sometimes assistant leader, and a Fight Club mentor at Pan Am. She has found somewhere deep inside her a level of confidence and self worth that girl she was could never imagine.
She's won the title of Goth Queen of Winnipeg, 2010. A pretentious title to be sure, but it's quite like winning Prom Queen. It's a popularity contest. Me, winning a popularity contest? Who would have thunk?
That girl also had the guts enough to coerce a young man to join her in at the dead dog swim at Keycon. A move which was nothing more than fun at the time, but set in motion a deeper acquaintance that has blossomed into something totally amazing....
A few months later that same young man was on her Facebook, and was coerced into coming out to Goth Night with a mutual friend. And had a pretty good time. And was coerced into coming out to Halloween. At which time my friendship with him evolved into something more, and I am now astoundingly lucky to call him my sweetie.
And I'm eternally grateful I wasn't too shy to ask him to come swim. :)
This NYE, instead of spending it alone doing laundry, remembering how I got dumped right after New Year's that one time, I was with my sweetie, ringing the New Year in, which has been great to me so far, in spite of my ongoing health trouble I'm determined to conquer.
I'm back at boxing as much as I am able, I am mentoring, I'm trying to get back into a daily routine at work, and I spend time with fantastic friends and my amazing boyfriend. And looking back on the Steve situation, it seems like something I had to go through to get here. I guess I'm glad I did.