I Am Me

Sometimes writing is hard for me. I have so much going on inside my head, so much I want to say, but when it's time to write I don't know where to start. I feel overwhelmed, like what I have to say doesn't matter. I love reading blogs and credit it with helping me discover triathlon and giving me an incredible network of strong, fierce female athletes. But blogging has also put me in this never-ending spiral of comparison. At the beginning of the year I started documenting my weekly training. I wanted to be able to look back at what I had done while training for this goal that I've had for so long. Yet, each week I dreaded writing those posts because I never felt like I had done enough in comparison to everyone else. I was afraid that people would scoff at me or criticize me.

After taking a few weeks off of blogging I realized that while I don't want to write weekly posts about my training, I do still want to share my journey. I have enough training logs that I can look back at and see all that I have done in preparation for this ironman. What those logs don't tell are the stories, though. They are filled with numbers. How far I biked, how fast I ran. I do write comments for most of my workouts in my logs but they are only a snippet of my experience.

In these past few weeks I also realized that only sharing my journey from the perspective of my training does not tell the whole story. Yes, this is a training blog and yes, that is what I will continue to focus on. But there are more parts to me that just triathlon and training. I want to be able to use my little corner of the internet in whatever way I want, which right now means sharing in my journey from all perspectives. I recently read Matt Dixon's The Well Built Triathlete and that's when it really hit me how much our lives outside of triathlon affect our training. I can't change the cards that I have been dealt but I can change how I handle them.

For so much time I felt like I had multiple personas. I felt like I was juggling two different lifestyles, in large part because of some of the people in my life. They took from me, chipping away until I couldn't recognize myself anymore. I tried so hard to be the person they wanted because I thought that was what I wanted too. But it never felt natural. Something always felt off. I felt the most like myself when I was training, running with my dreams. It felt like I would take one step forward toward my authentic self, only to be pulled two steps back by someone who was trying to mold me into what he wanted.

Recently I've had a lot of time to think. And now more than ever has it been made clear to me how important it is for me to honor who I really am and what I truly want for myself. The other night I navigated a potentially dangerous road, imagining what my life would look like had I not broken free when I did. I wasn't sure what I was expecting but I knew it was something I needed to do. What happened next was I was overcome with relief, this feeling of freedom. It's hard to realize someone you care about is not the best thing for you, but boy is that statement true. Someone who was supposed to be building me up was instead tearing me down. Imagining this alternate life made me realize how truly destructive things had been.

In an effort to fully embrace who I am, I'm putting back together the pieces of me that were taken, destroyed. I don't want to feel like part of my life isn't good enough because what it all comes down to is that you cannot choose the things you like about people and discard what you don't like. I am me and I will not change that for anyone. I want this blog to be a place where I can say whatever I want. A place where I can share insights into my life, with the hope of maybe inspiring someone. I have been frequently reminded that I am not alone in my feeling like this and I think it is time that we embrace who we are, instead of trying to hide.