DNF

Posted on May 20, 2012 by

So it happened.  I finally got injured.  I’ve managed to run injury-free for three years, and during the second half of the Brooklyn Half Marathon yesterday, disaster struck.  I’d texted a handful of friends in the morning and said, “If I don’t make it through this race, you can have [insert item here.]“  I’d even Tweeted that I was pretty confident that the next 13.1 miles of my life were going to suck.

I hadn’t wanted to run, really.  But I figured that if I got up and did it, I would feel better.  It was a stunning day; the course was amazing.  If I was going to get the feeling back, it might well be at the Brooklyn Half.

Wrong.

One of my arches had been bothering me for a while — but that wasn’t extraordinary, and it didn’t bother me when I ran.  It was just a familiar ache/pain — a consequence of living in a big city; walking a lot; wearing flats with little support; wearing heels that stretched in the wrong ways.  A few days in supportive shoes and the nagging was typically gone.

Yesterday, however, was the day that my body had had enough.

What I’ve discovered, and tap-danced around, but refused to FULLY admit until now is that a few months of taking a toxic chemotherapy drug is actually akin to a catastrophic illness.  There is no “mind-over-matter” here.  There is no amount of cross-training, or light training, or weekend running that will undo the effects of that.

It will wipe out everything you’ve done for three years.  It will, however, make your non-working thumb feel a whole lot better.

So.  There’s that.  And I have finally internalised that.

Somewhere around Mile Seven or Eight, my right foot just…gave out.  I’ve never had something “give out” during a race, so that was a strange feeling.

I stopped at the Mile Nine medical tent for some ice.  All I wanted was to remove my shoe from my swelling foot.  At that point, I thought I might be able to walk the last few miles.  But after I got back out on the course and made it to Mile Ten, I had to stop again.  GAME OVER.

At least at Mile Ten, they had donut holes.  Contrary to all of my healthy eating, I love donut holes.  I never eat them — and I particularly love those sprinkle-encrusted ones that are impossible to find on the East Coast, but that are abundant in my parents’ town in California.  But even still, give me a Munchkin any day.  So while I wept, and consented to be “swept” (which is the term for when you pull out of a race, and they pick you up in a bus because you can’t finish), the medics plied me with donut holes.

This story is not that exciting.  What gets marginally more exciting is that I have to get on a plane in eight hours for a whirlwind bit of travel.  And when I mean whirlwind, I mean, three countries in five days; 13 hours of meetings a day; lots of walking.

How does one manage this?

The answer:

One crutch.  A bag with a cross-body strap instead of a rolling suitcase.  Fed-exing documents in advance so I don’t have to carry them.

Packing light.

Hoping for the best.

I guess the thing that gets me is that I pride myself on never quitting; never giving up.  I don’t think I take the easy way out of things.  Admitting that I physically could not go on; being unable to even walk to the finish was humbling, frustrating, but in a way liberating.

I wear a necklace that says “no” to remember to set boundaries with people…but sometimes I think I completely forget to set boundaries with myself.  I run roughshod over my own needs.  I am so obsessed with being perceived as a strong woman, or, at least, as not being taken for being weak, that I manage to hurt myself, or screw up the easy stuff in efforts to get the hard stuff right.

So, no, I did not finish — contrary to my constant bragging about how I “always finish.”  I did not get a medal.  (The Evil Hamster of Self-Doubt in my head is gloating about that.  Have I ever written about The Evil Hamster of Self-Doubt?  That’s another post for another time.)

But, in the overall scheme of things, getting a medal seems small this allows me to properly rest and heal and run another day.  And let’s not kid ourselves — who needs a medal and you can have donut holes?

Posted in Adventures, Rants | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Answered Unquestioned

Posted on May 18, 2012 by

In the continuing spirit of me serving not as a role model or an example, rather as a horrible warning to you all, I should tell you about how I “celebrated” Mothers Day with my friend JM.  JM is Miss Mal’s long-time boyfriend.  (Is it Mothers/Mother’s/Mothers’?  I’m going to go with “Mothers,” as in, “we celebrate mothers” — plural — and not, “this is a day belonging to mothers.”)  Miss Mal was in North Carolina with her mother for some kind of family celebration, so JM was left to fend for himself.

And since I am a childless, and JM’s daughter lives with her mother out-of-state, it made perfect sense that we would want to have a cheery Mothers Day brunch together.  Right?

Right.

After running one of the suckiest four-milers I have run in recent history, I donned a beloved, old sun-dress and a smashing straw cloche and headed out to brunch.  I think I looked a bit like a wacky, nouveau Lady Edith, which was perfect for the madness that was about to ensue.

I met JM and we sat at a cafe in the East Eighties, gobbling eggs and guzzling bloody marys, talking about life and love and friendship.

What are your plans for the rest of the day? he asked, as we got the bill.

I have none, I replied.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the deck at the Central Park Boathouse, having commandeered some chairs from some other patrons.  JM had another bloody, and I had switched to Sauvignon blanc — my summer drink of choice. 

There was one summer when I drank rosé, but that was a fad, a phase.  It ended one night when Bill and I had doorstepped JM and Miss Mal at their old apartment in the low-Seventies and the River.  Bill and I had brought, of all things, donuts with us.  We ate Munchkins and took turns djaying YouTube videos till the wee hours, sweating in the summer humidity with an East River breeze intermittently cooling us down.

For some reason, rosé never tasted as good after that night.

I had last been at the Boathouse in 2010, that same Summer of the Donuts.  I’d been with a friend who periodically came to town.  We’d dined a few tables back from the windows, and talked about Stuff and Things, and then stepped back out into the sucking August heat in Central Park, leaving important questions uncalled. 

Central Park was full of questions.

So JM and I sat on the deck, contemplating The Lake. 

I know some people who have proposed on those rowboats, I offered, watching couples row. 

That seems like hell, he said, What if she says no?  Then you’re stuck on a rowboat.

Could you imagine being stuck on a rowboat in the middle of “no”?  JM and I looked knowingly at each other — that was what the end of a marriage felt like.  But how awful to feel that stuck feeling before the thing had ever begun!

And so we drank.

Care for an afternooncap? JM suggested, as the day began to get smaller. 

And then my day of drinking hit me like a ton of bricks.

I admit that I can be a bit of a drag when I’m under the influence.  I can go down the rabbithole of doubt; I tend towards the classic sad drunk lately. 

I staggered home; laid down on the sofa.  At some point in this dreadful fog, I managed to call my mother and attempt to wish her a Happy Mothers Day (emphasis on attempt).  In the course of doing so, I had an hour long, (apparently) coherent conversation with her about questionable things that I had been doing with my life for the last year.

I have only a vague recollection of any of this. 

While my Impaired Self is a lampshade-on-the head trainwreck, my Caretaker Self is a ninja.  I still managed to remind Impaired Self to a) order dinner (of which I had no memory except for the delivery bag I forgot throw away); b) send my mother a preemptive text message to Forget everything I told you; this conversation never happened; c) take pictures of everything I wasn’t able to do and leave my iPhone out with a post-it on it to check the pictures so I’d know what wasn’t done in the morning.

My unconscious is a control freak.  You do notwant to be friends with that girl.  I do not want to be friends with that girl.

Fast forward a few days, and I sheepishly called my mother.  If you hadn’t told me you’d been drinking, I never would’ve known, she said, You’re a very coherent drunk.

Well, at least I’ve got that going for me.

There are a lot of things that make great Mothers Day gifts.  I thought I was winning at life because I sent my mother an iPad, and we bought her a digital camera.  I guess even remembered to call.  However, drunk dialing your mother is not necessarily recommended — not even if your badass ninja unconscious Caretaker Self can keep it together for an hour. 

Apparently, the chat was great.  The “burn this message” text, probably not so much.  The lesson here is that if one’s mother does not query one’s state of sobriety, one should add as little complexity; raise as few additional questions about one’s life as reasonably practicable.

Posted in F & B, friends, musings, Stuff and Things | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Once in a Lifetime

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

My sweet Roo is turning two years old in a few weeks.

I greet this with mixed emotions, because I am crazy and I cannot stand the thought of him getting older.

I’d like to think I’m not a nutso dog owner — I have no illusions about him being A Real Boy.  He is a dog.  He doesn’t wear clothes, or sleep in my bed, or sit on the furniture.  I think his biggest flaw is that he begs for food.  And my problem is that I accidentally on purpose reinforced his food motivations, because I may or may not have fed him from the table on Winesdays when he was a puppy (aka, all of us had been drinking). 

Otherwise, he is the Greatest Dog Ever To Have Walked The Earth.

He didn’t even teethe too badly as a puppy — yes, there are a few teeth marks on the base of my round table.  And I think he nibbled on the moulding behind the passenger’s bed (weird that I call it that?  What do you call the empty side of the bed?)  But otherwise…nothing.

Oh, except for chewing up my $800 wallet.  I hate to use numbers or talk about the specific cost of things in public, but this is one exception I’ll make in order to illustrate the point.  One of my BFFs (who lives in Hong Kong) asked me about the wallet when I saw her, since she’d been with me when I purchased it a few years back.  We’d been walking around in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and on a whim, I stopped in the brand boutique and I bought it.  It was a little souvenir of a terrible year — to sort-of borrow from The Sundays.

Do you still use it? she asked.  And I laughed, and pulled it out to show it to her.

Yes, I said, holding it up, gnawed edge and all.  For a time, I swore I was either going to replace it, or have it repaired.  I still haven’t gotten around to doing that, and it has been almost a year since Roo ate it. 

She chuckled.  She’s also a dog person — she’d texted me when she was in London a while back, en route to Wales to see a new puppy.  Are you in London?  I wasn’t.  Change your trip!  I’m going to Wales to see a poodle breeder!

And that’s how dog people work. They become pied pipers of Welsh poodle breeding excursions.  I almost did change my travel, too.

So if Roo’s worst crimes are begging, gnawing a table, and eating designer goods, then I suppose there are worse things.  And since it’s a really nice little purse, and since wonderful food is generally served at my table, I can’t fault him for his overall excellent taste.

I call him a “Once in a Lifetime Kind of Dog.”

Which isn’t true, because I previously had a “Once in a Lifetime Kind of Dog.”  Her name was Lilly, and I adopted when she was older.  She was gentle, and kind, and had a personality where even my ex-mother in law, who was just not a pet person, fell in love with her. 

In mid-2006, it became clear that Lilly was dying.  We went to extreme and expensive lengths to either save her, or make her comfortable, but to no avail.  Then the vet finally said, It’s time.  And we knew we had no choice.

I have only one real regret in my life, and that is that I couldn’t stand to be in the room when we put her down.  Andrew held on to her, and I walked around the block.  Isn’t that awful?  It was just too hard.

After Lilly died, my mother had a painting done for me based on a Christmas card picture I’d sent of her that year.  The painting hangs in my entryway now, right above Roo’s leash. 

And so the story goes, when I was finally ready to adopt another dog, I went to several different shelters looking for an gently-used, certified pre-owned, midsized dog.  And instead I came out with a tubby, eight week old puppy. 

While I was in Hong Kong, I was FaceTiming with Kat, who was babysitting Roo, and she lowered the phone to his face.  He heard my voice, and he looked around for me.  Then he nosed toward the screen as if in recognition.

In my lunatic, dog-owning mind, I thought: I have done it.  I have arrived.

It’s not that I think he’s a Real Boy.  But I do believe there are special creatures that come into our lives to save us from ourselves.  Why else would there be service dogs; seizure dogs; cancer-sniffing dogs — dogs who lay down their lives for their masters; dogs who stay?

Living with Roo has taught me to be patient; to be loyal.  To love unconditionally.  To become irrationally excited over small joys.  To remember to take time to snuggle; to take shorter workouts and more time for dinner.

And to not take myself and my fancy things too seriously.

Seriously.

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Love is All Around

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

I am becoming a Single Girl Stereotype, like something out of Central Casting.  If we’re being generous, maybe I am Mary Richards for the New Millennium.

I made the Mary joke once at a party, and someone said: Mary Richards, who’s that?

Another partygoer, trying to be kind and ignore the fact that I was either much older than I looked, or I was a bit of an old soul, jumped in: No, you’re more like Carrie Bradshaw!

I replied:  For a Sex and the City reference to be apt, there is a condition precedent which is lacking.  Let’s stick with a show where I’ve at least seen every episode.

(I understand that the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” was groundbreaking because Mary was neither a divorcee nor a widow.  I am, in contrast, divorced.  However, since I am a single woman, living alone, I’m going to ignore the question of my marital status, and go with yesterday’s two out of three ain’t bad theory and carry on with this analogy.)

There was a New York Times article not long ago about the number of New Yorkers who live alone.  The piece discussed how solo-dwellers become a bit odd, and, before you know it, you’re standing in the kitchen, buck naked, eating creamed corn straight from the can at 2:30am while talking to the flatware, simply because you can.

Is that going to be me?  If you could see the things I wear (or don’t wear) at home, and if you could hear the conversations I have with the dog, you might start to wonder.

Living alone can be a rough go.

It is no secret that I’ve had a rough go of it lately — for reasons about which I’ve written, and some which I have not.  But taking all of this into consideration — the things said and unsaid — I made a last-minute appointment with my rheumatologist yesterday to address these (among other) concerns.

I sat in his office.

I just don’t feel good.  I can’t control my heart rate; I’m lightheaded; I’ve fainted a few times.  I think I have cancer and kidney failure and my liver’s starting to go….

He pulled up my electronic chart.  I’ve been his patient since I was 24 years old.  He is the only man with whom I’ve ever been completely honest. He listened to me as I talked; as I sped through my ordinary and extraordinary concerns.

Is it possible, he asked, that you’re scared? 

I mulled that for a moment.

I’m not saying that what happened in March and April wasn’t real — because it was.  But is it possible that you’re frightened since this is the first time you’ve really felt less than perfect since you’ve been alone? 

And is it also possible, he asked more pointedly, that you forgot to eat once or twice and that made you lightheaded and now you’re scared of that too?

Ah.  He was delicately calling the relapse question.

And yes.  It was possible.

I had emailed Tink a week or two ago on that point.  I’d implied that it was as if the pressure built all year, and by Memorial Day, when I could take no more, everyone else in New York got relief by going Out East.  Instead, I spent my summers in the City, “regaining control” by losing it; hanging out with my eating disorder.

She’d replied that she believed in me; that getting through the summer with out a relapse — which would be a first — should be my goal.  Her message was so firm; so fair; so consistent.

My doctor and I looked at each other with an unspoken acknowledgment before he turned back to his computer.  At that point, I realised he was googling something.

Are you googling something?  I asked incredulously.

We both knew that there was still some of the springtime toxic medication circulating in my system.  The only way to remove it was a special drug.  In the event that I was still having some side effects, he wanted to take the offensive product out, but he was searching the dosage.

I could keep a bunch of dusty textbooks in my office, or I could search the product information and get the most up-to-date dosage.  Which would you prefer?

We both laughed.

If I thought this was just in your head, I’d put my arm around your shoulders then send you on your way, the doc said as he went back to his googling, Still, don’t discount the power of a hug.

A friend had said just that the night before, as my frayed seams were coming undone and I’d sent out distress signals.  Post sunny Sunday drinks on the deck of the Boathouse, I’d capsized in an eddy of self-doubt.

The captain of a shipwreck.

Did crashing, and questioning, and sickness, and relapse, and need, and want, and all of that make a woman less powerful; less attractive?  Was that why, in wedding vows, they made you swear to all of that “richer/poorer/sickness/health” stuff?

I did not know.

The doc sent me on my way with a prescription and a squeeze on the shoulder; left me with just as many questions as he’d given me answers.

So I suppose it comes down to this: maybe Mary had it right — being alone is okay, though sometimes scary.  Maybe I was missing the point of the show.  And the doc reminded me that there will be bad moments.  There will be creamed-corn-nights.

Still, I frequently must be reminded that I’m gonna make it after all.

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The Ministry of Questionable Advice, First Dispatch

Posted on May 15, 2012 by

I read a lot of parenting books (and business books, and dog training books — but I’ll get to that in a second).  The parenting books thing is a weird one since I am a childless divorcee.  BUT, I am of the mind that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and since most of my friends are parents, and I can’t really…join ‘em or beat ‘em…I might as well at least be able to have some understanding of the contours of their experience.

Of course, one cannot glean that from a book.  But at least by reading, I can understand what the hell a “bumbo” is.

My life, on the surface, sounds very exciting: Manhattan, finance, and travel to exotic locations.  But in reality, it’s a lot of exhaustion, and a lot of (hard, interesting) work, and, sometimes, that weird, airporty smell of jet fuel and other people’s flatulence.  And to me, my friends’ lives sound very exciting: watching children grow and develop; teaching essential parts of the human experience; using unfathomably exotic equipment by which I would obviously be maimed.

However, I know that my friends’ lives also consist of a lot of exhaustion; a lot of hard work; and sometimes, that weird, householdy smell of old food and other people’s bodily emissions.

In sum, I sometimes don’t know how to impart to my friends that I think that our experiences, at their core, are not all that different.  Save for passport control part, and the having other people insist upon joining you in the bathroom bit.

(But travel does make for some equally unenviable toilet stories…)

This gets me to the point about the books, which is that I have discovered that parenting books, business books, and dog training books all say exactly the same thing.  They tell you that you must reward good behaviour.  They tell you that you must be gentle with yourself.  Above all, I think they can be distilled into three core principles:  You must be firm.  You must be fair.  You must be consistent.

And an unspoken, overarching bit of advice I would add there — not merely in parenting, business, or dogs, but in all of life — is that you must act like you know what you are doing.

For instance: Recently, I told my mother about an entry I found in an old journal — something I’d written when I was 12 or 13.  I’d said something to the effect of:  I wish that my parents would understand that I get it.  This is their first time being parents.  Well, this is my first time being their daughter!  It’s not like we all should know what we’re doing.  I just wish they’d act a little more like they did.

Time out.

My mother is going to kill me for sharing that.  But I mean to say it as something she did very RIGHT, and not use it in any way as an example of shoddy parenting (THOSE examples typically involved Cool Ranch Doritos.)

What I AM saying is that, even as a kid, I knew that my parents were human beings.  Seeing my parents as three-dimensional, falliable people made it a lot easier for me to accept the choices they made for what they needed, especially when that was in conflict with what I wanted, and it was not fair, or they were not firm in their convictions, or it did not seem consistent with what they had done before.

What I AM NOT saying, however, is that Doritos are ever a sound parenting decision.

But this underscores the point of how difficult it is to be firm, fair, and consistent — because, by nature, none of us is all of those things.  On a good day, perhaps we can muster one, maybe two.  One is good; and in the words of my man, Meat Loaf, two outta three ain’t bad.

My professional life is built around being firm, fair, and consistent (it is, in fact, the very nature of my job.)  But my personal life is not.  And I’ve been reflecting lately on 2008-2009 and the ways in which I systematically dismantled my life/marriage/career and moved on.   I bought a lot of Harvard Business Review books back then; I read them on planes.  I mostly did the opposite of what they suggested.

Until they said that failure was a key component in success — which, by the way, the parenting books and the dog books said too.  Business would go bad.  The kid was going to bite.  The dog was going to pee on the floor.  Reward the good; ignore the bad; carry on.

There was a time in my life when I thought I could somehow operate outside of these fundamental principles of success.  I thought I had to know exactly what to do. 

There is no knowing, which I continue to struggle to accept.  The most you can do is be firm about who you are, where you are; be fair about where the boundaries are set; be consistent in enforcing them.  And still, we’re going to screw up in business; we’re going to instill a bad habit or two in our dogs; we (by which I mean…you) are going to drop the ball as parents.  There’s no way around it.  The best you’re going to get is a Meat Loaf earworm. 

So, having done all this reading, and collected all this evidence, I can tell you: Be firm.  Be fair.  Be consistent.  Act confident — mostly, you do know what you’re doing (and by that I mean, having the hopeful willingness to occasionally look stupid).  Be gentle with yourself.  Avoid the Doritos at all cost.

And don’t judge me for not always taking my own advice.

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Keel

Posted on May 13, 2012 by

I had brunch on Saturday in Soho with eee, Katarina, and Rebecca.  Katarina is a very tall, gorgeous Croatian friend of eee’s, and Rebecca is a medium tall, gorgeous fellow UCLA alum.  As you all know, eee is quite tall, gorgeous and blonde.

I lovingly refer to myself as “Skipper” in those situations.

(See, e.g., “Horse Lovin’ Skipper” -  Barbie’s waspy kid sister.)

I rarely, if ever, go downtown to see friends.  Downtown is full of ghosts for me.  It makes me feel very…divorced, since my entire marriage was lived downtown.  But I went, and it was a fabulous brunch, and so I was glad to have hopped on a stuffy, sticky 6 train to Spring Street to make the trip.

I wonder, sometimes, if one ever stops feeling divorced.  Maybe not.  Divorce is a unique loneliness — different than the aching feeling of an unhappy marriage.  There’s a lot of lonely in this big world, but interpersonal loneliness has to be the worst kind of it.  I knew it was time to split when the marital feeling was worse than the alternative.  When I couldn’t bear another day of waking up next to a resentful spouse; coping with a perpetually heavy heart; feeling like I was living a Simon & Garfunkel song.

Honestly, if you wake up and one day and find that you have a visceral understanding of Paul Simon lyrics, then it’s probably time to go.

Feeling divorced is strange.  My friend PG once asked So when do you go from ‘divorced’ to ‘single’?  And I replied that on government forms, the answer really isn’t clear.  Once divorced, that box seems permanently checked until again married.  Some people marry again quickly, just to get the “D” off of their forms, maybe.  I couldn’t; I can’t.  I still have such a violent reaction to the word “commitment” that I have been known to break out into a sweat or hives when the conversation turns to Where is this going? and the answer is anything but a sincere: I don’t know.

I continue to be in an I don’t know place.  Some days, not knowing makes me laugh, and makes me feel like I have all of the possibility in the world ahead of me.  And other days, it makes me want to tear my hair out in frustration.  This, apparently, is what being a human being is all about.  It is an unappealing state for a controlfreak like me.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, this all got me thinking more about Skipper, Barbie’s little sister.  Allegedly, they gave Barbie a sister because there was a consumer desire for Barbie to have a “family.”  But who wants a sex object saddled with offspring?  Mattel settled for siblings instead — hence, Skipper.  But some speculated that maybe Skipper was really Barbie’s illegitimate child, dressed up as a “sister.”

That happens, you know.  People do that all the time — they lie.

So there I was on Saturday in Soho, the short girl in a sea of glamazons, speculating as to the parental origins of a plastic doll, meditating on my state of I don’t know.  eee and I left brunch and walked north through Soho; talked as we walked; discussed Where We Were in the present-tense.  Our maxi-dresses floated out around us — Barbie and Skipper.  Men photographed us on the street, which reminded me of being in China.  Except in China, they wanted to be photographed with you.  Here, strangers snapped like paparazzos for No Apparent Reason except for our vague resemblance to schoolboys’ dreams.

Were they taking pictures of us?  we each asked.  It had happened a number of times; snaps shot by men behind Time/Life-quality zoom lenses. 

At some point on that beautiful Saturday spent walking the streets filled with ghosts, I remembered that not only was Skipper the kid sister, the skipper was also the captain of a ship.  I laughed a rueful laugh to myself for having forgotten that.  It brought back a host of memories — of sailing out of North Cove with my ex-husband; the spray of the Hudson in our faces; our strange, French sailing instructor hanging off of the back of the boat like a madman.  Thierry would roll cigarettes like a stereotype and shout instructions in Franglais.  The boat would keel, and I would laugh and push harder. 

Then there was that time in North Carolina, when we sailed just the two of us.  It was near the end of the day (and of our marriage).  The wind picked up while we were out in an otherwise protected cove.  Andrew wanted to turn back, but I shouted for more and made him stay.  The boat keeled, hard, and Andrew had had enough.  We turned around for calmer waters, but he never forgave me for those sideways moments. 

I was a mutinous first mate.

But sailboats were made to keel.  And maybe, because I’d been the one shouting the instructions, I wasn’t the first mate, but the captain.

eee and I wrapped up our walking and talking, and I made it home in the late afternoon, early evening — the hem of my yellow dress filthy from the downtown streets.  I was still reflecting:  What was I doing wrong? 

Dunno. I. Don’t. Know.

What I did realise, however, which I had realised previously but kept forgetting, was that I am the captain of this shipwreck — the skipper — and we are all made out of shipwrecks.  Broken, battered, splintered on the shore; flotsam and jetsam bobbing the in the bay; hull ripped open for the world to see my precious cargo.  I am in control only of the fact that I am not in control; I know only that I don’t know.

It seemed strange on Saturday night to understand for once that the ghosts weren’t downtown at all, and Skipper wasn’t just a short-girl state of mind.

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Trying to Get the Feeling

Posted on May 12, 2012 by

During my Epiphanies of November Through March, I swore up and down I would stop being so hard on myself for running shitty races.  But fast forward to the present day, here I am, judging myself for not being a “perfect runner.”  For running slow times.  For losing focus.  For dropping off, physically, halfway through.  For considering quitting.

Argh.

Have you ever been here, fellow runners?  The best I can compare it to is trying to train with one’s mind in a taper and one’s body struggling to recuperate from an existential chest cold.

When I started marathoning about three years ago, running was a constant high.  There was a lot of change in my life, and running became an anchor.  I was also training in some of the most stunning places in the world, and that helped soothe me, and solidify my love of the sport.

There was a lot of exuberant crying over first finishlines.  When nothing seems to be going right, but you find you can push a previously non-working body to do things that work, it is like discovering the Holy Grail!  And when you get to cross a finishline to cheers and someone puts a medal around your neck?  Oh. My. God.  It’s like you’ve just won the Olympics, AND made out with Jon Hamm right there in Central Park.

Running made me feel connected to myself.  It made me feel like I knew what I wanted and when I wanted it.  And I kept getting better at it.  There was occasionally a bad race — but for years, every race was better than the last!

Enter 2012.

There are perfectly logical, rational reasons for me not to be running perfect miles: travel; health; lighter training.  I don’t have the time or stamina to train like I did before, and I haven’t run the number of long-distance races by this point in the year as I did last year.

The health thing is a big one — it’s a weird one; a shape-shifter.  Some days are better than others, but mostly, the best example I can give is that while running used to make me feel like I understood my body, right now, I feel like I am an adult, and my body is an uncommunicative teenager.  For instance, I take one look at Harlem Hill in Central Park, and I start handling it like I used to, and my chest cavity sends the signal back to my brain that says,Bitch, please!  In other words, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  And totally off texting some pimply boy from fourth period math class while I’m trying to run up a damned hill.

(I know I’m using that flesh thing out of context, but bear with me.)

It sucks hard, and I get angry, and I get frustrated, and I’m sad, and I think: This is absolute crap.  I do everything right, and I drag myself out of bed, and I have to get up earlier than a lot of people because I have to walk my dog before I show up for these races, and why am I not running like I used to because I’m here, I show up and…

Guess what?

There’s no Attendance Award in running.  You start or you don’t.  You run your goal splits or you don’t.  You finish…or not.  Sure, they’ll give you a medal at the end when you finally get there, but you’re still running against yourself.

I want to love this again.  I want to wake up, and put on my pink compression sleeves, and attack my training like it’s what I live for.  I want to be able to push.  I want to train back to where I was before.

And I want to be able to accept that I might not be physically able to do that.  At least, for now.

That, friends, is one of the hardest things I’ve had to write in recent memory.  It’s the difference between running my goal splits, and…not.  It’s the difference between running six marathons a year plus twelve half marathons (which sounds superhuman, looking back), and running two marathons plus two half marathons.

Most importantly, it is the difference between proving something, and learning tolove something again.

I suppose, if you’re not a runner, this post isn’t as relevant to you.  But let’s be honest.  Once you have had those finishline moments — those times when you’re not only wearing a medal but you also feel like you’ve just made out with Jon Hamm — you’re not really going to settle for less, are you?

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