I feel like every new post has a little more despair than the previous one. I get up, drink my coffee, answer emails, go to the office, drink more coffee, deal with whatever, come home, drink another coffee, go work out, come home, and crash. It’s this monotonous cycle, but I’m okay with that. I have always been one to favor consistency and repetition, thanks Dad.

My real issue right now is, I miss our fucking dog. I can speak of her fate in so many different ways. I can choose to be eloquent, to be blunt. I can opt for flowery terms. Sammi’s gone. We had to put her down. We helped her cross the rainbow bridge. We couldn’t save her, we couldn’t fix her, we couldn’t stop her internal bleeding. She’d feel better for a few hours, move around, go outside to use the bathroom, and collapse from exhaustion. I’d have to carry her back in, or just let her lay in the grass for a few minutes til she caught her breath and then help her back inside. It was sheer torture for us, and probably even more so for her. We couldn’t tell her what was wrong, she was likely so frustrated that she didn’t have the stamina to stand up and pee, or play, or just walk. She’d be so determined to move around though that she’d do it, and then she’d frantically aim herself towards the nearest dog bed (they were all over the house) and collapse.

I never thought I’d ache so much with her absence. She was such a pain in the ass, so loud, so barky, would never listen when we wanted her to stop barking! omg. I used to joke about how I wanted to give her away. I used to say tell people I’d make them a great deal if they took her off our hands. I hate myself for this. I hope she never felt unwanted by us, or unloved, or unappreciated. I miss her personality, her presence. She forced her way into our lives, there was no stopping it. If we were there, she was there. I miss the sounds of her breathing, the sounds of her dreaming. Of her sleeping on her back and scraping her nails against the wall while she was running in one of her dreams. When she got excited and literally couldn’t contain her whining. She literally could not stop herself from freaking out when she got excited. She’d knock down everything in her path on her way to the door, because she was so excited to be going somewhere. She was so excited to get to the office, so excited to go outside, so fucking excited to do anything with us. Anything. She didn’t care, she just wanted to be with us. And now she’s gone. In an instant. Talk about PTSD. I will go into more detail on her site if you want to read more about it, I don’t want to write it out twice, and I don’t want to cry any more about it than I have to. I’m so sick of crying..

Gym life. Between holidays, trying to mend my dogs, trying to keep shit going at work (so busy with local jobs, it’s absurd. It’s awesome, but it takes so much out of us!) the gym has been an afterthought. I’ve been going, but not as often as my mind would like. When I do go, I find myself just there to do the workout and leave. I don’t care so much about the social aspects, at all, anymore, whatsoever. In my mind, nobody can relate to what I’m going through, I don’t feel like explaining, I don’t want to deal with small talk, I don’t want to smile and say the fake niceties, I just want to go in, work out, and leave.

It’s my own fault I don’t have time. I need to make the time to do the things I love. It is my responsibility to make time for the things that make me feel better. But… I will complain for a minute here. I really have been hating the WODs that we’ve had. I’ve always been our gym’s biggest advocate, but jesus fuck, I really hate the WODs lately. I just want to lift weights and do like, a little cardio. Maybe, power cleans, push ups, wall balls, and I don’t know, deadlifts? That’s a good one. Or, just power cleans and push ups. Or just power cleans. Or power cleans and wall balls. Ooph. Every day. Trap city. Quad city.

But you know what? Again, it’s on me. If I want to do nothing but power cleans and wall balls, and maybe a few push ups here and there, that’s on me. I need to make that happen. I could go in and do those. I could even go in the garage right now this very second and do goblet squats, jump rope, and push ups right now but instead I’m wallowing in my misery and complaining about the programming. Maybe I will go do that. I am sore from yesterday’s wall balls and it feels so good. It feels good to hurt from something that I did intentionally to myself to help myself get stronger, better.

It’s interesting how some hurt we crave, and other hurt we despise. I love the “sore muscles” hurt. I hate the “my beautiful dog is gone and won’t ever come back because she had incurable cancer” hurt. Do I put those in quotations? Italics? I don’t know. I just spent too much time trying to format that and then realized I don’t care enough to research it.

I love being busy. I hate being overwhelmed. But it’s such a minuscule line between the two. One phone call can take me from being busy and productive to wanting to rip my hair out and give up on everything. Why is that? I love projects. I love completing projects. I love seeing the end result. I hate ongoing projects. I hate unfinished business. I hate loose ends. Tie that shit up. I hate things that are out of my control, even more so.

Maybe that’s it? I don’t mind the hurt that comes from things I can control. I did 115 wall balls yesterday and my quad are sore as a result. I did that to myself, on purpose. I knew what would happen and I went balls out, anyway. I hate the hurt that is a result from things I cannot control. When I’m out of control, I don’t know how to stop it, I don’t know when it will end. I can’t prevent it. I have to let it happen. I have to experience the anger and pain and hurt until the universe determines that I’ve had enough.

Okay, Universe. I’m ready for a good year, please.