My mat isn't slippery anymore.

Hmmmmm....not sure that I agree.

I still go back and forth be determinism and fatalism. Maybe I should figure that out.

http://theresurgence.com/2010/12/22/patience-you-are-not-in-control

Dear Pennsylvania,

I am writing you an email tonight instead of blogging (of course the email will be posted). This is a direct email to you. That is a shift in and of itself.

Last night our conversation helped me to realize that I am finally friends with myself. That for the first time in a long time I can say I love myself - not every moment, I still struggle with shame and self-doubt, sometimes self-hate. But I am getting there. They say that someone can only love you as much as you love yourself. If that is true, and I believe it is, then it is not a surprise you weren't in love with me. I wasn't at a place with myself where I would invite true love into my life. Maybe I was getting closer, but it's almost as if when I moved out to Philly I took major steps backwards. Maybe I moved to Philly to avoid myself. After all I chose love (someone else) over school (me). Of course I am grateful everyday that I moved to Philly because our relationship taught me so much about myself and truly opened my eyes to the road of self-acceptance and what it means to find someone who respects and loves you unconditionally.

I remember early on in our relationship telling you "I am not ready for you" without really understanding what that meant. Perhaps it meant that I still need to work on self-acceptance and self-love. I still don't think I am "ready" for you entirely. In some ways I have just begun to truly explore my relationship with myself. Yoga and meditation have been true places of healing and acceptance. Each day I step onto my mat I am doing it for myself, I am learning how to deal with discomfort, to hold strong in it and yet do it with ease. I am building strength. These lessons on the mat translate to life off the mat - in fact I think that yoga is really about life off the mat. Meditation has been a struggle - I have never been one to take time to breathe. You know I struggle deeply with anxiety - slowly I am learning to cope better with that through meditation and yoga too. But this is just the beginning. I get excited when I see my progress as a person in just the two and half months I have been here. I can't wait for 6 months, a year....5...10! I hope to spend a lifetime working on myself.

Today I decided that your house analogy might be right. Though part of me thinks it's one step further. We have the foundation- an amazing friendship based on mutual respect and love. We have the walls. Maybe what we lack is solid Earth below us. There is no where for our house to be grounded - no where to plant our roots because we don't have the Earth. You are not in love with me. Love is the soil we must plant our our roots, that extra special kind of love.

I am very hesitant to re-explore things with you because of fear. I am afraid of getting hurt. But there is also a part of me that just thinks you aren't worth it. Why would in invest so much risk in someone who isn't even in love with me? It seems so foolish - it lacks all common sense. I deserve more than that. I tend to put my heart on the line - I am always foolish when it comes to love and so far it has only led to heart-ache. Maybe for once I should stop playing that role of the fool, slap myself across the face and invest my energy into something more certain, into someone who doesn't doubt their feelings for me. Is love supposed to be this hard? Isn't it supposed to be easy - especially at the beginning? The romantic in me says YES! love conquers all - and it is that love that helps ease you through life. The cynic (maybe realist) in me says that if you are really doing them correctly relationships are challenging - they do push you and they can be complicated.

Also I feel like I been so blindly in love with you. So much so that I disregard your flaws, I disregard our flaws. You aren't financially that stable and frankly neither am I. I just seems like we would be so far from ever really being able to have a little home and a family. It's important to me to stay home with my kids - how would we do that on your salary? I just think it would be a struggle. I wouldn't want to wait 5 years to have a family. There is timing involved in relationships too. Of course I think that if there is that shared "in love" feeling then you work through this things together, because it is worth it. Plus sometimes I feel like you are even less in love with yourself than I am. I look at your relationship choices and think why would someone let themselves be treated like that?

And Penn. - what if you really do have blocks when it comes to being loved - to loving? I need to ask myself do I want that person to be my husband? I certainly don't want him to be the father of my children. My therapist said that some people are just too hurt or repress the hurt too much to ever really love or to ever really be in relation to someone. When we would talk about you he used to remind me of that. I look back on our relationship and think about how we grew together and the closer we grew together the less you in love with me you felt - the less attracted you were to me. Maybe you really are blocked, maybe you have been hurt so many times that you closed up shop. Dealing with crazy girls with drama allows you to avoid looking in the mirror. These are just what ifs. But I hope you are exploring them.

One more thought - and then I am going to bed. I am exhausted. Truly exhausted.

I bought this new yoga mat about a month ago. After researching and asking around I was so certain that it would be perfect. When I proudly rolled it out in the studio for the first time and did my downward dog the mat was so terribly slippery it was dangerous. I fell out of poses - couldn't even hold poses!!! I was so disappointed!!! I had heard these mats can be a little slippery at first. So I thought I will be patient - give it a couple of classes. Two classes....three classes....four...five....ten - still slippery like ice. I broke down and made my own yoga towel, just accepting the mat for what it was, slippery but beautiful (and thick). Today after my first class I took the towel off for yin. Well tonight yin started with sun salutations and bunch of chaturangas.....and guess what? My mat isn't slippery anymore. Patience, acceptance and time.

I love you.

Love

Wisconsin