Journal Entry June 2008

I’m obsessed with my husbands affair. I’m obsessed with this woman. I look for her car. I have visions of them together. It coils around me like a life sucking python and squeezes the sanity, the dignity from me.

That's when I go to Bikram Yoga.
Ah. Yoga.

This is where I create my own healing crisis. Where I put myself in a 105 degree room and focus and work for 90 minutes and balance on one leg for an eternity while pulling the other leg straight behind me and listen to a stream of information from the teacher and connect my body with my mind and say over and over again, “thank you thank you,” even though I feel like I’m going to die.

But I don't die. I keep breathing and working and praying and sweating out toxins and pain and hate and soon my skin is glistening and my clothes are soaking wet and my body is listening to my mind and I am strong and I am calm all at the same time. And I do this TO MYSELF. I put myself into this insane environment. I honestly think if I weren't in such trauma already, there's no way I would even try it.

But I do. And in this way I control how and when I release my emotion, how I work out my pain. It's not my cheating husband or my dying dog or anything external pushing me to fix myself. I do it. To myself.

I say, Self. Today we’re going to yoga.
And my Self says, oh no. We can't go there. The yoga studio is right next to where Cheating Husband and Skanky Whore work together. What if I see them? I can't go near that building, near that part of town, I can't take it and besides I’m too tired and my knees hurt and my heart is broken and I just want to lay in bed and cry while the kids are gone and I need to bla bla bla

But in the end, the Me that’s determined to take back my life wins and I drive my excuse-making sad little self to the yoga studio and I look right at the building next door where my husband met the woman of his dreams and works there with her now in infidelity bliss and I sometimes cry and I sometimes get very angry but I always park and climb the stairs to the stinky hot studio. And once I’m there and I'm lying on the mat getting used to the heat and stretching out my hips and back, I remember why I do this.

Because here, I do extraordinary things. I learn to work hard and then quickly recover. I stand still and I control my mind and my body with my breath. I focus.

And I remember that can do the impossible.