More back story

I guess that there is still some more back story... After I got home from Iraq I began to struggle with some major depression issues.  For about two years (maybe more) I didn't leave my house, I didn't eat or shower or sleep.  I was never really suicidal, but there were may days I wished for a major accident to end it for me.  I flunked out of college.  I struggle with pain in my shoulder, my doctors told me that if it hurts don't do it.  So I stopped living life, I grew up doing sports, but I was afraid to do anything that would cause me physical pain, and my anxiety kept me trapped in the house.  After about 5 years I hit a point where I had to have shoulder surgery, the nature of the joint separation I had makes it only get worse with time.  In October 2009 I quit my job, had shoulder surgery, and shortly after moved to a new town to start college again at a new university. 

After my shoulder surgery I was still cautious about using my body, afraid to cause myself any more pain.  I started dating an amazing man, Pryor, who is active and was on his own journey to be stronger, leaner, and all around healthier.  I wanted to keep up with him.  I was beginning to see how much of life I was avoiding and how sick and out of shape I was.  I tried a variety of things: going back to Aikido, swimming laps, going to the gym on campus, changing my diet.  None of it was quite doing what I wanted, I was bored at the gym and needed something different.  After some searching and listening to a friend of mine talk about CrossFit, I thought what the hell, I'll try that. 

It actually took a couple of months to conquer my anxiety of going to a new place, putting myself out there, and joining a new gym.  I finally got the courage to go to Alternative Athletics.  It's a CrossFit gym.  CrossFit focuses on functional fitness, instead of isolating muscles and hours of cardio, we use our whole body and do shorter high intensity workouts.  It is definitely intense.  We also focus on community, we are not just a gym, but a family (actually CrossFit gets accused of being "cult" like, we're so tight)  At Alternative Athletics they do a free workout to see what it's like.  The Newbie Shuffle is a 10 minute workout of rowing, box jumps, and wall balls.  I could not finish a 10 minute workout.... Katie stopped me about minute 6 because I felt like I was going to blackout...  It was awful and embarrassing.  I was the skinny fat kid, I look fine from the outside, but I was in awful dangerous bad shape, I ate terribly and was quite sedentary. 

At first I was embarrassed and thought of never going back to that gym.  But I realized that I couldn't do that, I had to change.  I had to face the fin and learn to live again.  I've now been crossfitting for about 8 months.  I love it, I hate any day that I don't get to the gym.  I love feeling stronger, every workout is a challenge.  I've met so many great people.  It has helped give me confidence in all aspects of my life.  I am coping better with my anxiety and have been able to get off all of my prescription medications (except a sleep aid, but I cut way down on the dose of that).  I also started Olympic lifting.  It's super technical, which my analytical brain loves.  I've only began to get strong and healthy again, but I want more.