Balrog has been gone for a year. Monster is next. Day 1.

No workout to report. I thought about biking to work today, but I'm so tired and wiped out. No energy after the past week of travel, bad nutrition, and being sickish.

366 days of NO BALROG. Wow. He's not gone though. Yesterday he asked for access, but was denied. Haha, will this make sense to me in a few years? I suppose it will. Like I say, he's not really gone. Will he ever be? I see no way for him to come back right now. "Him". Really, a "him"?

Anyway.

Life is about to change dramatically. This COVID bullshit is slowly ending, and life will return to normal for everyone else. June starts in 2 days, and June is the last month I have with LA living here in St Louis. After that, he's gone. I'll see him on weekends (and I have a plan to work 4x 10hr days to get Friday off for those weekends), but that's not the same. It's going to suck, it's going to threaten to put me back into the old coping mechanisms of previous years.

Those old mechanisms include M. Lately, it's not even stress relief. It's a way of thinking, a way of being, that only damages me. It sets me back. It's almost self-destructive. No. It's self-destructive. It's just not obvious and direct.

Well, that's must more denial.

What I'm getting to here, is that it's been 366 days of No Balrog, and in one year I want to be able to report back saying "365 days of No M". Do I really want to be in this same place one year from now? Heck, even one week from now? Today?

No. I don't.

M makes things worse yet it's like a die-hard habit living with me. Why does it keep coming back? It's like smoking. I've quit a hundred times. A week, a month, 200 days, a year. So I know I can kick it to the curb. What stops me from keeping it out?

This is getting weak. What I'm getting to here, is that I'm more than ready to stop but I'm facing a situation that causes it. And when LA leaves, that opening for M is there - wide open doors and time and opportunity. How will I deal with it?

Sitting here typing, it's all so easy. Just stop. Just don't. Just go home and one day at a time work through it.

So here's the promise. I don't want to look back AGAIN and see this failure. I don't want to be left alone with M for this next year. I don't want to move with M. So it ends here. It has to.