healthy...

first off, a big shout out to Jamoosh for concocting this hardCORE workout torture ritual. thanks. heaps.
second, but more importantly, a gigantic THANK YOU shout out to TLW. (+1, me).
here, in part, is why:
at the house, we are once again in "get rid of $h1T" mode, and we spent some time on Sunday going through closets and piles and such. my side of the bedroom closet was about ready to be overhauled, so after I got my hazmat suit on and had T stand at a safe distance, I dug in.
amoung the discoveries were 2 Adidas running shoe boxes, both EMPTY, both sized 8.5. but....one actually fit INSIDE the other. i was amazed. really. i pondered it for quite some time before continuing with the process. other things were found, several useless, many keepers. and herein lies the rub:

I came across a small stack of photos of various things in my 'previous life'. (this is how i often refer to the time when I was married to my ex-wife, and even to times before that). one of them was a picture of one of our (ex-wife and I) old houses. without thinking twice, i tossed it onto the pile of stuff destined for the trash. never gave it a second thought, except perhaps wondering why or how it had managed to survive undiscarded for the past 7 years.
FFWD a little while, and I am unfolding a pair of jeans from the floor of my closet, put there by me about 2 months ago. i have developed little worn spots in the seat, near the pockets, so i had taken them out of circulation. did i toss them? no. i left them in the closet for consideration at a later date. well, today was that day. i unfolded them. looked at front and back. looked over at T. she was looking at me oddly, but that in itself isn't odd, so i continued to examine the jeans. they weren't anything 'special'. no sentimentality attached to them whatsoever. Just a cheap pair of jeans. knowing me, i probably only spent about 15 bucks on them, and that was probably 5 years ago. can you guess what i did with them? that's right, i folded them back up, and started to put them back into the closet. WTF?
I looked over at T, nearly crying, and said, "why do I do this? i have NO trouble wiping out certain things from the past, like pictures of my old house, but can't seem to be able to toss out EFFING BLUEJEANS WITH HOLES IN THEM?" (i didn't shout, but i did emphasize the words). she replied, very calmly, as if she had been waiting for years to say it, "because you get rid of things that cause you pain. you don't discuss them, you discard them at the first chance you get, and try to get rid of them. (or something very, very similar to that. probably more eloquent, but the jist is still there). you need to face them, move through them, and get rid of them, so that you have room for all of the GOOD in your life now."
i lost it. i cried. i sobbed. she's right. as ususal, i must say. i don't face my evils/fears/hurts/etc. i try to sweep them away, and they take up too much room. my present life is bursting....BURSTING I SAY with goodness. Wife. Family. House. Job. those and more. yet i am often too pre-occupied with wrongs in my past to truely be able to appreciate the rights in my present.
and that, in itself, is wrong.
serendipidously, today i received a request to join a network (?) on linkedin. i rarely go there, and had used it a few years back to find some business collegues. the request was from a running coach, Jill Bruyere,  whom i had never met. are any of you working with her? so anyway i went to her site and poked around a bit before joining her 'network'. she had two blog entries about 'rules for life'. it was a list of 25 things, broken into two lists. Numbers 13 and 17 made me think. They made me think enough to write this blog, so if you are bummed that you read all the way through this for 'nothing', well....blame Jill. nah, blame me. I can take it. Oh! what were #'s 13 and 17? I will share them with you now:
13. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
17. Forgive everyone with everything.
i shall try.
thank you for sticking with me through this post. i am on my way to better mental health, thanks to my lovely and loving wife, who I should have listened to better almost 25 years ago.