Races

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Secret Thoughts Are Heavy

I like to journal my thoughts in emails to myself. When I'm particularly disturbed and chit-chatty, I can have a thread a million emails long going back and forth between me and myself all in one evening. I'll be all, "I fucking hate stretchy pants! And I hate everyone who looks at me!" and then I'll reply with, "but I'm amazed at my body for growing a human, and I need to go slather it with coconut oil and remind the wobbly bits that they're appreciated, and loved, and rather quite exciting, if looked at under the right lighting, with squinty eyes, after a glass of red."

When I was a kid, we didn't have email or smart phones and so I had to journal in those stupid little hard diaries with the spines that don't bend, with the locks on the front that only succumbed to a teensie tiny little key that was almost always lost. And I believed that no other little girl could think such wicked things, and so to put them down with pen on paper would be a horrific crime for which I most certainly would get caught and severely punished. 

We all know, however, that there are just some thoughts that we cannot hold inside, that if we did, they'd eventually liquify and seep out in some form or another, quietly like an oil spill or explosively like a volcano. And so I decided, one day, when I was a child, that I could write down all my wicked thoughts onto paper but that my words would be illegible; I could write each letter of each word of each sentence, right on top of one another. Depending on my levels of anger and insanity, I had been known to push a soggy ink blob right through that piece of paper. I'd sit there in church, or school, or at home at the kitchen table, grip my pen in one hand, push the edge of the paper down with the other, and write down all sorts of death and hate, right there, and I'd get it all out. The loathsome enemy could be sitting right beside me and I'd be writing all sorts of evil things about them and they'd never even know.

I think many of us wish Facebook had this status update option, yes? Like, every time I post something that looks like a giant ink blob, all 4 people who click on my timeline will know that I am probably bloated, irrational, and hateful.

We all don't need to put down our dark thoughts into an ink blob. I mean, when we feel like we're ten minutes away from being institutionalized, we can deal with it in our own way. Everyone needs a Safe Friend: a friend who won't judge or laugh or phone the cops when you unload your dark hateful thoughts about life. We can write it, or speak it, or symbolize it into a rock and throw it into a lake. We could walk twenty minutes into the forest, pull our hair and scream out impossibly nasty things into the night air. Or, when it's dark out, we could drive along the freeway and verbally abuse the empty seats next to and behind us.

But whatever we do, however we choose to get it out, once we do we will feel a whole lot lighter. And maybe those stretchy pants won't be needed anymore.


Friday, March 14, 2014

Baby Steps

On March 3rd, we had our baby, our little nursing champion: Callum Andrew Slane. At just over three weeks early he managed to hang onto a solid 7lb and 12oz of pure adorableness. Thankfully, he knows that his neurotic mama needed to get out for a run at the earliest possible convenience and so he decided to make his grand entrance into the world before his due date (he's getting an extra inheritance for this decision).

I went out for a run two days ago and when I got back home, right before I collapsed into a puddle on the front steps, I pumped my fist in the air and shouted Chevy Chase's line in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: "HALLELUIAH!.....HOLY SHIT!"

Then I ran again yesterday. And then I'm meeting Lora for a run today and celebratory beers in the trail parking lot.

I am wife and mother, daughter and sister, friend and lover. And I am runner. Because I'm out of time, I wanted to share with you guys what my fellow Canadian runner brother Steve wrote today, because it hit home with me so much and I know that so many runners out there will also recognize their own hearts in his voice. Until next time, here's Steve:

Runnersworld dot com’s Daily Kick In the Butt:

We run to undo the damage we’ve done to body and spirit. We run to find some part of ourselves yet undiscovered.” ~ John “The Penguin” Bingham~

A few years ago, I was dying. Not in the conventional sense of dying from some disease…just dying from the inside out. There was still life in the body but that isn’t the same thing as really living, is it? Listless, confused, and depressed…and getting fat. Shit had to change. I have talked about it before but I never wanted to lose my edge. Of course, somehow over the years, I got softer. The edge turned into rounded edges.

The edge has changed. It no longer involves reckless behavior and intoxicant fueled concepts. Now it consists of finding that undiscovered part of myself. In an age where there seems to be very few frontiers, perhaps the last frontier is within. Now the edge is just a hunger for breaking through barriers…testing my will and becoming stronger inside and out. Running gives me the ability to tap into what lies beneath.

The edge is undoing the damage to body and spirit…and mind. Funny how changing your physicality can change you spiritually and intellectually as well. Never before have I felt so alive (at least not in a really long time.) As I grow as a runner, I have also grown as a human…more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding. Understanding of my own strengths and limitations and understanding of others’. No longer stuck in the rut that seems to claim so many lost souls, I have learned to live.

A simple choice but one that a lot of people don’t seem to figure out.

Get busy living or get busy dying.” ~ Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption)