The Power of my Peeps... Wednesday, January 13

I love my friends here in Toronto unlike I have ever loved my friends before and it's strange to admit this but it's true.  I can to Canada alone but I am more alone that most assume me to be and more alone than most know I am.  I was smart when I arrived though, I situated myself in a new-to-me neighborhood, reunited with old friends but really focused on getting myself some new friends whom I could talk to and see on an almost-daily bases.  I really wanted to make new friends when I came here, not because anything was wrong with those who I've known for years but because I came back as a totally different person.  

I have secrets now when before I didn't.  I'm not a person who likes secrets.

My new friends know my secrets but only a few of my friends from my past know them.  Slowly but surely I've been exposing them to what really went down in Korea but I'm hesitant with doing so because of the mixed responses I've been getting.  It has meant I've lost friends while have gained tighter bonds with others.

There are six friends in my new Canadian life that I talk to almost every single day and three of them I see probably 4-6 times a week and I'm really trying hard this time around to be a better friend to my friends.  In Korea I was always alone -- I did things alone and I always felt alone.  I wasn't a good friend because I had secrets so I just wanted to be left alone.  These days I am very much an open book with my friends and I think that's the biggest difference to my character than anything else.  I feel too old to have secrets and too exhausted with keeping them.  I lost out on a lot of life and happiness trying to keep them and it proved to do nothing but hurt me.  I think it also hurt my friends too because I didn't share them with them; I held back.  I didn't give them the opportunity to be there for me when I really needed someone to lean on, someone to pick me up.

Today I met up with a friend of mine and we touched on this -- secrets that hold us back.  I'm not the only one who has secrets, I know, but I think a lot of people don't realize just how much such secrets hold them back from real happiness -- real happiness and real love.  I tried my hand at giving my friend advice in her particular situation today but I know it's ultimately her decision.  I won't go into the details of her situation but will say that I've been in it before and then I came to Canada.  She's got her own fears with leaving her situation, that's understandable, but she could do it if she just took that leap of faith.  I did it.  She just has to believe in herself.

So many people didn't believe I'd be able to make a boxing club in a foreign country, in a foreign language and as a foreign woman but then I made the biggest boxing club there, in Korea.

People didn't believe I'd ever leave Korea because of the life I had created there, the life that was so beyond the picture perfect life I let others believe I was living, and then I left.

Who cares what others believe.  It's all about what you believe.  You decide the fate of your own life.  And if only you just believed, you'd be unstoppable.  

Most people have no idea what I left in Korea -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- and it's really not for them to know, fully understand or even accept.  I know, I understand and everyday I'm trying to accept.  I knew coming to Canada that I'd need a real solid support system to help me readjust to Canadian life because of what I stepped out of when I left Korea and then having to step into life here in Canada.  I think I have established quite the support system but it's still a struggle regardless.  It's just nice to know though that when I'm struggling I've got people here now to confide in and lean on.