Blessing in disguise

Tears fell from my eyes today. Of course it's that time of the month for me and my hormones are raging and I have the worst cramps that feel like someone is continuously punching me in the stomach, but I think the tears were coming from a genuine place. My heart hurts.

Each day I fool myself into getting out of bed because today is going to be better. I go through the motions I go through every morning and tell myself that today will be a good day. I tell myself that although I am not the person that I was a few years ago I can do anything I want to. Truth is, I can't do anything I want to.

I have hip dysplasia. I am constantly in some level of pain, it currently feels as though someone has a sharp knife sticking in my hip joints and every once and a while they turn the knife. I'm walking without crutches or a walker, I barely have a limp now so I think I'm normal. I am so far from "my normal." I go to the grocery store to shop and after 30 minutes my hips ache, my lower back hurts and I have a sharp sensation in my IT band from my surgeon cutting my muscle to get to the bone during surgery. I have to plan my day around being able to rest at some point to relieve some of the pain. I take tramadol every night so that I can get a decent nights sleep. Nope, nothing normal about me now.

The worst part? I have BILATERAL hip dysplasia, meaning I have this problem in BOTH hips. Within the next year I will undergo the same surgery that I just went through 4 months ago. My worst fear? It not working and I went through it on both sides. 

One may think this all sounds so negative, I can see why. It is negative, but throughout the past 3 years I feel I have a few reasons to be a little cynical. All of this however has given me a lot of things to be grateful for. I value my life a whole hell of a lot more than I ever did before. When I was a bodybuilder "figure competitor" I thought I was genuinely happy. I enjoyed working out, training my clients and living in my own little bubble, truth is I was fooling myself that what I was doing was actually healthy, I was fooling myself to think that I was actually happy. Lifting weights was my escape to avoid dealing with reality. Now that I look back on those 3 years I realize how much I took things for granted, my family, my friends, my opportunities, but most of all, myself. I completely destroyed the person that I was inside and out. I told myself that I was never good enough, that I could never be good enough. I listened to ass holes tell me to do workouts that made absolutely no sense, to take things that were so detrimental to my body, to limit myself to 5 foods for months at a time. It was an out of control spiral that would never have ended if I wasn't faced with this physical ailment that sometimes I view "wrecked my life" but did it really?! Did repairing my beautiful relationship with my family "wreck my life?" Did realizing how beautiful I am inside and out regardless of how much muscle I have or how "cut" I was "wreck my life?" Did finding a man who I love with all of my heart and putting  tons of energy into our relationship "wreck my life?" And did realizing my passion for my education that I never had before "wreck my life?" I don't think so. If anything I think I should be so grateful for the physical ailment I have been given, because it saved my life. There is always a blessing in disguise and there is always a light in the darkness. 

My fellow PAO warriors and myself :)