Fight Smart not Stupid.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. 

 Everything I ever need to know about life I learned at the boxing gym.  "Always keep your hands up, never lean against the ropes, and keep them chasing you."  Never let your opponent see you flinch. And for the love of god "STOP THINKING, STOP THINKING, STOP THINKING!"
  I was about eight months sober when I met my trainer.  I had given up bartending after I moved to Florida, because my head started getting just too damn "swirly".  Drinks were looking appetizing and so was escape. I was going to drink and get high, FAST.
 I don't recommend leaving where you got sober at four months at all, but I sure did find some strength in it. I gave away everything that I owned in the town house I rented from my uncle, packed everything that I could in my two door, hatchback hyundai accent including my dog in the front seat and I left.  I didn't have a job to go down to and not really a home  I had a room and I was sharing a small house with my best friend and room mate from Virginia's dad allowed us to crash at his work shop/guitar shop/guest house.  It was the most freeing experience I ever had.  It was hard, but I learned how capable I was, the meaning of money, and the little materialism actually fills our lives.
I started working at a gym after I decided my desperation for making money was over, and I could no longer bartend at a dive bar two blocks down from where I lived, called The Bearded Clam. Eye roll.  I made the ultimate sacrifice of  high pay and tips, and started working at a gym for eight dollars and fifty cents an hour.  I also worked part time at a makeup store.  My life was very spiritually hard, but I knew if I had continued my place of employment I was going to go back out, get high, and never make it out alive.
I gave away easy money for a healthy mind. I opened the gym at five in the morning Monday through Friday.  I mopped the floor, every morning. I cleaned all the counters. I lubed gym equipment. And sat there looking at the clock.   It got me in bed every night at 9pm and in those long lonely hours, I got DAMN close to God and my personal humility.
 I met amazing people in the program at that gym outside downtown Sarasota, and it became a sort of gym counter AA or NA meeting, one on one at your training request.  Just an added bonus to your gym membership. That's where I met Tony Spain. Golden Glove champ who hailed from Ohio and opened a boxing gym in Sarasota, Florida. He has a crooked nose, always wears blacked out sunglasses and drives a red scooter.
I showed up every day at that gym. I learned how strong I was in that gym.  And it gave me a save place to be sober and I learned how to be patient, humble, and how to hit 'em hard.  The biggest thing he ever taught me was "Fight smart, Kate. Not stupid."  Wear your opponent out.  Always stay on guard, don't let them read the next move you're going to make.
One day while doing drills, and I will remember this for the rest of my life.  I was on a heavy bag doing what was told of me, or so I thought.  And in the middle of the drill from one bell ring to the next, Tony Spain screamed at the top of his lungs slamming his down on the ring right next to my bag screaming. "STOP THINKING, STOP THINKING, STOP THINKING!!!!."  I stood in awe.  Tony has a way of yelling at you, and then making it seem as though he's yelling at the gym in its entirety. Because you know, hes trying to run a business not run people off.
Whenever I find myself in moments of paralyzing fear, fear of the unknown, or just too damn afraid to even move. Tony pops in my head on that day and I hear stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking.  Get up and move, the move is whats going to keep you floating and the way that the next course of actions is going to set you up to sting like a bee.
I applied my lessons to my life. Running away from Florida was quite possibly the most exhausting thing I had ever done.  But I had to keep moving.  Gracefully, at that.  There were times where I just floated.  That I knew that what I was doing was going to lead to something.  I had nothing when I came home to my parents house with my five month old.  I was in so much debt and had so many doubts and emotions going through my mind, I could hardly pick up my one foot to even take a step.   I lost fifteen pounds from the stress, and had to stop breastfeeding because I had nothing to give for production.
There were times were I would lay in my bed at night and actually thought I was dying.  And I would imagine beautiful Viking funerals in old relic boats with candles burning and white flowers spread around me, with my long unmanaged hair sprawled about me.  And I floated off into the distance on a beautiful river.  I let that part of me die.  I let myself mourn because I knew the old me was gone forever.  She was never coming back. There were times where I thought I was really actually going to be okay, and I would get so excited and so pumped I would become manic for days.
I thought he would chase me, he didn't.  He had other plans.  And until a lawyer had told me, "let him show the court who he really is, let his son make the decision, you have already made your decision. He knows how you feel about him."  I quit wasting my energy to fighting and screaming and crying, and put it into the tiniest little moves I could make to keep floating. And keep floating, and keep floating, and then I knew I was going to be ready and able when the time comes to sting like a bee.
So I stopped thinking and just started moving.  I didn't let my opponents see my next move, and I held my composure in the day light the best that I could.
I applied for every assistance that I could, and received most everything. Because I qualified of course.  I was a freelance photographer for a real estate broker, my images at this time were TERRIBLE, but I kept moving.  I kept photographing, I kept applying to jobs that I did not qualify for, sending out resumes and cover letters.  Eventually I got something. And eventually I got something better. And something better. And something better. I didn't just talk about doing it with my closest friends; I made the action, I took my next move.
 Its not pretty, but ugly turns into beautiful.  Doing something when you just don't want to do it, is probably the hardest thing in the world.  And damn is it gnarly.  My sponsor said to me once, way after this immediate process, "Usually when something seems incredibly difficult, its the most important time to do it." It is not a pretty process, I got deathly skinny.  I smoked entirely too many cigarettes.  I doubted almost every moment and every action I did.  I drank entirely too much coffee. I didn't think I was worthy of anything. I cried. I crashed after doing too much, or from over thinking things that I could do NOTHING about at the time.  I had to redirect myself almost every hour of every day.  I cried. A lot.
I called someone everyday.  I let my words flow out of me, I let my sadness be heard by my closest and dearest friends.  I allowed them to see me the way I needed to be seen.  I read some extremely powerful books, written by extremely moving women.  I almost couldn't complete a single task because I was so distracted and overwhelmed with how much was going on, and how much I had to do.  I would dive into depression for weeks and lay in my bed with my baby.
All though, I was so depressed all of those things I had done even prior to my depressive episodes eventually played out.  And the sweat, blood and tears that I poured into something turned into either a great tool, or a great action.
When I can't find something to keep moving, I find the the next best thing to do.  I was told in my beginning days of sobriety, and I mean I could count the hours in, by a very wise person with seven years, whom I cherish very dearly to this day and has shown up in my life in VERY magical ways, to make my bed.  He said "buy new sheets, make your bed."  And I did.  I was so desperate for relief from my substance abuse I was going to do WHATEVER was suggested of me.  The bed making turned into laundry doing, laundry doing turned into organizing, organizing turned into vaccuming, vaccuming turned into cleaning the bathroom.  And all of a sudden slowly but surely, I learned how to slowly put my life back together in the beginnings of sobriety.  By simply cleaning the dish in the sink.  And making my bed every day.
Now this has turned into a very on-going, extremely meaningful joke with my best friend, whom got sober shortly after me and lived with me during this time.  She witnessed my slow moving body aching and the pain staking efforts of "doing the next best thing."  Whenever I feel pain or doubt, or something is going on I do the laundry; or sometimes it just holds me back down on earth.  There is a huge difference though between obsession and just doing, though she knows enough to know the difference. Our closeness during our sobriety has allowed her to see me make my bed, do the dishes, clean, do whatever I can and  to a point where will feel she has to say "What is going on with you? Talk to me."  She will stand in the middle of the room with one hand on her hip and curiously look around the room like she smells bull shit in a corner, and says "You're doing your laundry three times a day. What happened?" or "All you do is chores, you're pregnant you need to rest, I KNOW WHATS HAPPENING AND I DON'T LIKE IT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU."
I had called her about four months ago, with tears rolling down my face, my heart aching, my mind busy with latent thoughts; I had the job, I had the assistance for my son that I needed, I was doing just FINE.  I wasn't going to meetings, I wasn't talking to a sponsor and I wasn't working the steps, I wasn't keeping anything simple.  My life became scrambled and and my thoughts far too advanced and ahead for where I was in the present moment.  I had put myself in an overthinking freezing meltdown and I had called her for her to tell me things I needed to hear, not the things I wanted to hear and she said, "Katie, when was the last time you made bed your bed?"