Reflections: “tightrope highwire”

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Deep Thoughts, Love, reflections, relations

Is it possible to fall in love again?

The kind of emotions that take your breath away when you realize they still exist.

When do you realize there is a possibility?

Is it when that first kiss makes the world around you stop, and four minutes later you both realize it’s just the first date?

Is it when you realize you not only opened the restaurant for dinner, but closed the bar, the whole time wrapped up in each other like newlyweds?

Or perhaps when you watch him show off his various works of art and points of professional achievement, puffing up like a proud peacock, and rightfully so. You are anything but bored, and are fascinated by the working of this other persons brain.

Maybe when you look across the room at him and realize that the ache deep down inside that has been hurting for so long is starting to subside. Not because of someone else but because you look down and see that the wounds of the past are faded to scars.

There are many things we look for in love. Not just a long term relationship, but a forever future. A couple needs to be compatible on multiple levels and really be someone you can grow and grow old with. Someone to share all the incidentals of life with. Your lover. Your confidant. Your honeybunchsugarplum. Your best friend. The person who will be honest with you no matter what, even if you are having fat day and your hair looks like crap.

We give people chances to be that person in our lives and ourselves in theirs. Sometimes you realize a week in that it’s just better to cut bait quick before it gets anymore tangled, or you give it a few months and work out some bumps. Either way each party knows their deal breakers and it’s best to knock those suckers out quick in my humble opinion before you waste a year of your life on what will just end up being a shoe box of memories.

When my last marriage died I lost my husband, one of my best friends, my comic relief, my sunshine, my hero, my love.  It was excruciating. I missed having that connection and I wanted it back so badly. I had a lot of healing to go through both mentally, emotionally and physically, and a lot of growing up I had to do. I stupidly tried everything I could think of while the wreckage of what was the fairy tale was burning all around me. Nothing could or even would be able to fix it. There comes a point in life when you just have to survey the wreckage, take notes and move on. Staring at the flames of the plane crash isn’t going to do anything but dry out your skin and make your eyes itchy.

It’s been a long road. I’m at a point in my life where I have so much love to give. So much laughter and smiles to share. A passion for life and learning. I have identified things I need, things I want, and of course “panty droppers”. I’ve stepped out on that tightrope highwire of love a few times and been scared to death. It’s a long fall and it’s so easy to get hurt. If you want to have a relationship work you can’t just give it 90%, it’s going to take 110%+ and from both people. Just when you think you have identified a “low-risk” candidate something comes along and makes you realize it’s not the wisest investment even though it’s categorized as a “low risk”.  One goes running back to the safety of the platform, having your muscles shake in terror as you look down realize you could have fallen and there was no safety net to catch you.

Then leave it to me to have a “high risk” investment come by, and I being the hopeless romantic say “what the hell” and step on that highwire. My muscles shaking in terror and I hoping that the clowns in the ground crew put up a safety net just in case my partner on the other side of the tightrope isn’t able to meet me in the middle. I’m holding my breath… I don’t want to fall alone again.

Here’s the catch…. you don’t have to have a “safety net” or someone on the other side of the wire to catch you, you can catch yourself.

Color Matched Weapons

http://olegvolk.net/blog/2011/12/22/color-matched-weapons/

Talking about “Out” on Chillin’ with Jeff and Kenny C

 

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17905065/highlight/209132

Thanks to Jeff, Kenny and Laura for having me on the show!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why do we need ACL’s anyways?

So I’ve sustained my first recent running injury.

Yes you read right: “running”.

In the past few months I’ve taken up running, not just running on a treadmill as I’ve done for years, but good ole’ outdoors I’m as asthmatic running during ragweed season, running. It is SO much harder! Even though I’ve kept an incline set on my treadmill I really had it easy. Your body is forced to adjust to your environment with each and every step, therefore making it harder on your body. Your whole body is put into a workout of epic proportions (okay maybe not epic but it’s my blog so I’ll word it as I want to) even your nose is forced to work overtime (at least mine is).

During my teenage years my knees took a good beating. Between my attempts at sports, gymnastics, car accidents and just life in general both of my ACL’s became next to non-existent. Add to this years thereafter of wearing high heels and I’d hate to hear what a specialist would have to say about them nowadays.

I had managed to work up to almost two miles on a gravel inconsistent course, and two miles on a more consistent paved greenway. I was considering doing a 5k for fun,(yes I said “5k” and “fun” in the same sentence) and the very night I was going to sign up in the middle of my post run stretch my right knee dislocated. It was the same excruciating pain I’ve experienced multiple times over the years. So needless to say the “just for fun 5k” was off.

Last night two days after the re-injury I got in almost a mile before it started bothering me. I had wanted to go tonight but it just wasn’t going to happen.

I’ve discovered that you don’t get the same high running on the treadmill as you do outside. Sure I’m going though my inhalers faster and antihistamines like they are candy, but it’s so worth it. I feel like a sloth if I don’t get that run in. I feel like I’ve gained 5 lbs overnight and I don’t have the freedom to eat whatever I want if I don’t run.

Meg and I at the Komen Race 2011

It’s going to take me awhile to build back up to where I had, which wasn’t really that much to anyone else probably, but to me it was.  This year was a first at the Chattanooga Komen Race For The Cure that I’ve emceed for many years, that I wanted to run. Normally I’m happy with just running my mouth, but watching the results come in I was guesstimating in my head as to where I would fall in the results (“alive” was as far as I got). I will always prefer to run my mouth, but if I can I’m still aiming to complete my first 5k by the end of the year.

Out

Currently (this week) I am a lesbian on Facebook. This was not a decision I came to lightly. I talked it over with one of my close friends as we’ve flirted with the idea of becoming girlfriends on a social network basis. It would give us a chance to defend something we both believe in strongly, not in a quiet “oh let’s go raise money for this cause” but in a very in your face way that could not be shied away from easily. I also talked about it to some of my close friends who are very out of the closet and very comfortable with whom they are. I didn’t want to offend any of my friends but I also wanted to make a stand.

I was brought up to believe in traditional male and female relationships and that anything else was wrong. I don’t blame my parents for this; it was the way they were raised too. It was the way my church taught. I’ve discovered as I’ve grown up that the church isn’t always right on everything they teach, it’s an opinion and one must search and pray to find their own individual path not dictated by family, church or politics.

The first time I heard the term “gay” it wasn’t used in a very nice manner. I was bombarded by images of stereotypes. Once one of my female friend and I were innocently holding hands one day in the mall as teenagers, and a group of boys not much older than us started yelling at us, calling us “dykes” and other not very nice names, then the good ole’ standard “can we watch?” We walked off disgusted not realizing that two girls holding hands was a bad thing. It wasn’t sexual, it was just friendship. Our society has taken what is innocent and once not looked at twice and perverted it just as it has many other things.

There was a serious conversation that went down between my boyfriend and I before I made the decision to have a “girlfriend” on Facebook and go though this experience. I wanted to make sure he understood why I was making the stand that I was, and that our relationship would be okay. I wasn’t going to change my mind about what I was about to do, it was something I felt I had to do to make a stand for those who face the negativity from our general society on a daily basis.

I braced myself. I knew there would be some statements of confusion and expected to raise some eyebrows. Almost immediately my phone started blowing up with texts and my inbox was filling up with questions. I had no idea there were so many people interested in my sexual orientation. What business is it of theirs to begin with? There were a couple of negative comments, but surprisingly there was more positive than negative on the private side. I took count of my friends list before I went to bed out of curiosity, and eight hours within changing my sexual orientation I had lost five “friends”.

Then the inevitable happened. We were hit with the “can I watch” question from a straight male. This is uttered even to straight women who may linger in a hug in public. It’s a statement that I’ve come to loathe. The rebuttal from males has been “It’s just a joke” and “all guys think that”. It’s just rude. Would you ask a straight couple when you see them kiss in pubic if you can watch? Our society is becoming accepting a lothario type attitude from men when it comes to a woman’s sexuality, straight or gay. We roll our eyes, ignore, or fire back, but more often than not we ignore and change the subject and the issue is not addressed straight on. (No pun intended).

 

“Men just don’t understand that when you are with a woman, it means no men. So “Watching” is an oxymoron in and of itself.” If I am with a woman, I am not with a man at all. One too many times have I had to deal with guys saying “that’s hot” and “can I watch” so yes, society today, and due to the media being derogatory to woman, things that my sexuality is their business. I don’t’ ask straight people what they do in their bedrooms!” – Elizabeth, Chattanooga

Why does our society make someone else’s sexual orientation our business? Why is it such a big deal as to if someone is straight, gay or bi? We should not be defined only by what we do between the sheets, but multiple parts that make up a whole person.

 

“My sexuality doesn’t define who I am. I am defined by the type of person who I am. I am defined by what I do, not by what I screw. I don’t define myself as a gay male; I define myself as a successful male. I like cock, so what?” Scott, Chattanooga

There are those that are confused, angry, puzzled, upset by my statement. For anyone who I have offended I apologize but only because it is not my intent to hurt anyone’s feelings, it is my intent to make people take a second look at how difficult of a process it is for someone to come out and define themselves in a society that can be less than accepting of anything different than the so called normal. It’s Pride Week. If you are gay and out be proud. If you are still in the closet then be proud that you can at least accept that you are in the closet. If you are straight than be supportive of others who choose to live differently. It’s not our place to judge.

 

“What you are doing is cool. There aren’t many straights that would take the risk to do something like this to show their support for our community.” – Charity, Chattanooga

 
Let me clarify something due to some confusion and “mountains being made out of molehills”.  I am straight. I am not bi, I an not gay. This was not a publicity stint, but my way of showing my support for my friends in the community.