If you’re reading this, it means I had the balls to send this to Don as this week’s BriRun Blog. For the last week, I’ve been getting my interior a$$ kicked by the severe depressive disorder I’ve been toting around with me since 2012. And since pregnancy, it’s gotten worse.
I’m not here to use this platform as an opportunity to gain sympathy or a gathering of those little heart-hugging smiley faces available in the Facebook reactions. I’m using it to say to you and myself that the challenges of marathon training after having a baby aren’t just about not having oodles of time to devote to long runs and repairing your body after exhausting it with the construction/maintenance of a brand new human. Sometimes...A lot of the time...Daily for weeks at a time, the biggest challenge is convincing yourself that this still matters just enough to dig up the dullest flickers of energy you have left, after months of raising the most important thing in the world to you, to do this minor service to yourself and body.
Even when you know your body can do it, your brain needs some help catching up.
For the last week, despite being surrounded by Life’s goodness, people I love, and continuous reminders that they—for whatever reason—love me back, I’ve been wading (at times thrashing) in an isolated pool of sadness surrounded by tall canyon walls so slick that even Alex Honnold would find them impossible to scale. But today, I’ve found a little divot that I can use as a foothold to start climbing back toward the reality that exists above the walls.
Throughout these last couple months I’ve spent preparing for the GR Marathon, I’ve been caught up in tallying the number of miles I haven’t been able to do. And that’s distracted me to the point where my unaddressed doubts, feelings, and hormones (fo’ real, tho!) have been free to storm the Capitol unsupervised, stealing podiums left and right. Despite being in some sort of treatment for the last 10 years and reading at least one Brené Brown book, I didn’t consider how critical it is to repair my brain with the same level of focus I’ve been putting into repairing my body.
I’m not going to stop running. Aside from my family (and the thin possibility of Sylvester Stallone remaking Rambo V and getting it right this time), running has been the string that’s tethered me to a life worth living when my mental state was telling me to give up on everything else. What I am going to do is re-organize my priorities so my mental health comes before how many miles I’m able to run this week.
As for Baby, she always comes first; and if that means I $h*t myself during this marathon, just mind your business and keep running.
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