Walking Away

It's amazing to me how one little thing can instantly put you back into a painful memory.  It doesn't take much.  Sometimes it's a song, sometimes it's an action, and sometimes it's seeing someone.  Today it happened in my rowing class.

I walk up to grab my rower this morning and I saw a familiar face.  Not a good familiar, but familiar nonetheless.  I recognized this woman from my Weight Watchers group.  Hers is a face I won't forget.  As you might recall, I shared about how one of my last WW meetings went.  I was laughed at and my struggles were completely dismissed because I was young.  In case you don't remember, you can read about it here.

Anyway, this familiar face in my rowing class this morning was also at my Weight Watcher meeting that day. As soon as I saw her my blood boiled.  I was instantly taken back to that day and how humiliated I felt.  As I was rowing I was choking back tears.  And all it took was seeing her.  I can't say for sure if she was one of the voices I heard that day, because I was in the front of the room and all the cackling was coming from behind me.  If she did or she didn't, she was there.

So, what started out as my normal Friday routine, turned into an unwanted trip down memory lane. As a friend pointed out to me, these feelings are resurfacing now because I didn't deal with them then.  I didn't want to deal with them then because I didn't know how to deal with them then.  Walking out of that meeting and never going back was how I dealt with it. Truth be told, what I really wanted to do during my rowing class is get up and walk away.  I wanted to handle it today the same way I handled it then...  Walk away and cry.

But, I didn't.  I continued rowing.  I'm still trying to figure out how to work through this.  I'm still figuring out what to do with these feelings.  I'm sure that eventually I'll understand what I was supposed to learn from this situation.  I'm sure that seeing her today, and reliving that uncomfortable memory, will somehow make me stronger.  At the very least it's forcing me to deal with something that I don't want to deal with.  Wish me luck.