I usually need to sit with pain a while. Really feel it. Then I need to talk it out. Luckily, I am surrounded by wonderful listeners who haven't told me to shut up yet.
And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.
Sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up.
I told my wife, 'Look, I'm going to ask y'all to sacrifice. I need to go to Portland. I need to lock in.' At that time, I felt like my career... was on the line. So I told her, 'This is what I need to do. I'm going to be without y'all for a while. Y'all can come out and visit. But this is what I need to do.' She understood.
In deep pain, people don't need logic, advice, encouragement, or even Scripture. They just need you to show up and shut up.
When I meet children and people who suffer, when they mention any kind of pain, emotional pain, physical pain, I know what they need, because it's the same thing I need. They need healing, they need peace, they need joy, they need hope.
I need talk more, call people out. It's not who I am, but I feel I need to do this more to bring more attention for me.
My coach and I will have these arguments where I am in pain or something is wrong, and I won't tell him because I feel like I need to train. We have a blow-up of arguments, and he says, 'Shelly, you need to tell me when these things are happening.'
I do yoga. People think it is easy, just touching your toes. It is hard. But I tend to go with my own flow. It's back to the movement thing. I feel it when I need to train, and I do what I feel I need to do. And when I am in the run-up to a fight, I am really at it the whole time, might be getting my weight down to meet the limit for the division. Soon I am moving up and I am going to be champion in the next one too.
My ideals told me that men and women could both go out to work and be truly equal. My children told me something more complicated, something I really didn't want to hear. Their need for me was like the need for water or light: it had a devastating simplicity to it.
Shut up, sit down, and read. (Tory) Please? (Acheron) You need something? (Tory) You to be polite to me, Ms. I Own The World- Now Do What I Say You Pathetic Pleb. (Acheron) You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who takes orders anyway. (Tory) Yes, but a simple please goes a long way. I’m the one doing you a favor here. (Acheron) Fine. Please sit down, shut up, and read. (Tory)
We need to stop telling each other to shut up. We need to get comfortable with the reality that no one is going to shut up.
I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.
I need to get better as a player, I need to get fitter, and I need to get better on the mental side. It's exciting for me, because there's so much I could do better. I don't feel like I've really maxed out any shot. People talk about my serve, but I think that can even get better.
That's the main reason I took it up But I do feel I don’t know part of, I suppose, my way out of everything, has been really taking care of myself. I think that comes from an awareness that my children really need me, and they need me to be the healthiest version of myself that I can possibly be.
Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.
I don't think I'll ever feel perfectly balanced, but I feel like I'm figuring it out, and I'm surrounded by really wonderful people that want to see me succeed and be happy. Life is wild.