So I have been through soooooo much this year. I'm finishing up my Bachelors in Fine Arts (concentration in oil painting portraits), I got a promotion (to bartender but it's a promotion none the less), and I finally got serious with hooping. I've been hooping for about a year and a half but I really took to the hoop this summer; which is where this story begins...

I had been with my ex boyfriend for almost 3 years this past summer and things had begun to get really rocky. I lost myself in this relationship. I had alienated all of my friends and had made my entire life about him, he was my everything and my reason to live. I could NEVER imagine him not being in my life.

I used to be a super independent and outgoing person which I lost with him; also which I hadn't realized until now. I let him own me. It made me have no self esteem and I hated myself. Our relationship was never trustworthy and I knew he always kept secrets of other girls, but I let it slide because I thought "well he comes home to me every night." That was because we lived together and he had nowhere else to be. Over the summer it was getting worse. Rumors started surfacing and people started comming to me telling me things I didn't want to hear. I put all my energy into the hoop trying to force everything out. I was getting better at hooping, but when your soul no longer belongs to you it's hard to really progress. I was never happy and up until the day I realized what I had let my life become my hooping was at a stand still.

I more or less snapped out of it. After being cheated on for three years I said enough was enough. I kicked him out and took to the hoop like I've never taken to anything in my life. I found myself again. I found that it wasn't him that I loved, it was the warm body next to me at night. Hooping taught me how to love myself again and taught me to never lose who you truley are. Isn't that what true love is? Someone who lets you b you and lets you express yourself to the fullest, while keeping you grounded and sane? Well that's what my hoop does for me.

It's safe to say hat I'll probably never love a man the way I love my hoop, and besides, noone can cuddle in bed with me like my hoop can :)