Oh man guys, it’s been a while.
My whole entire life was sort of put on hold due to March Madness, and just as I’m getting my bearings together, NBA playoffs are starting. Bet-sy.
I apologize for the long hiatus; as mentioned, life has been especially turbulent of late, and it’s taken a bit of time and a lot of music (read: food) for me to stabilize myself a little bit. Of course, I can’t write this version without referencing the lowercase version (which *will* be written soon over here, I swear. Baby steps, y’all.), which is what inspired all this in the first place, so I’ll try to keep it short, in case you don’t want to bore yourself with the overly emotional/frank (read: heinously intimate) nature of my personal writing:
I’d like to believe that I live my life and I do the things in it with purpose. That is, I’m not meandering around through life without some goal in mind, without some reason for the way I do things. I don’t mean to say I live my life to become rich or a dental assistant or to get on television (although let’s be honest, all of you would be wholly invested in the television docu-dramedy “My Best Friend”/“Super Best Friends Dream Team”, about two mismatched, douche-y, quirky best friends on the trail for meth) — I mean that I live by a certain set of standards and morals, and I do so for some personal philosophy that I believe in, i.e. to be a good person, to live up to what I believe in, or to find/create happiness. For a while now, I’ve felt like I’ve been treading water in the public pool that is my life, and I saw no end to my feckless existence. While this feeling had to do in large part with my unemployment and the seemingly endless nature of it, it extended to other areas of my life. I know it sounds silly, but when things shake you to the depths of your being, or make you question your core identity, it makes you question the little things too. The things I believed in and the morals and standards I held so highly started to seem useless to me.
One of those things that started to lose meaning for me was ultimate, something I’ve always considered to be a big part of my life. This year, I’ve stayed about as far away from college ultimate as I could. I never checked scores, nor was I ever overcome with the desire to do so. I attended one tournament, and barely paid attention (sorry guys >.<). I didn’t read anything (Should I have received a USA Ultimate magazine during the winter? Real talk here, legit question.), I blogged about NOT ultimate, I didn’t play, I didn’t even look at a disc for the longest time. I actually didn’t miss playing.
It didn’t feel right — the fact that I didn’t miss it. Sometimes people would text me, like “Hey did you hear _____ upset _____?!” or “Wow, can’t believe _____ won ______!” I didn’t know and I usually didn’t care. I’ve always known myself to have an addictive personality. When I get into a song, I’ll listen to nothing but that song for about two weeks straight, until I can’t stand the dang jawn anymore. Once I’ve had one Twizzler or one Red Vine, I’ll go out and buy a whole bucket and eat it all in two days. When I first started skateboarding in middle school, I went all out and bought a sweet board (hell if I know where that thing is now), skate shoes, clothes — everything — that very weekend. But I had hoped that ultimate was different, that it wasn’t just one of my phases, especially after all the money, time, and work I had put into it. That’s why it didn’t feel right that I felt so comfortable without it in my life.
Ever since before senior year, my right shoulder had been really, really bothering me. I didn’t want to get it checked out at all because I didn’t want to hear a bad diagnosis that would keep me off the field in my last year of eligibility. So I ignored it until I graduated, when I finally did get a bad diagnosis. But I decided that I’d wait it out, see what happened if I just gave it some rest. Some time after the club season, I realized that I couldn’t ignore the real pain and possible further damage I was doing to my body, so I looked into surgery, but all the recovery times were quite unsavory. Getting surgery meant that I wouldn’t have the proper amount of time to train for the marathon (everyone who knows anything about my previous marathon endeavors are now laughing because my “training” is a joke and can’t be described without quotation marks), but getting it done after the marathon would mean I’d have to miss the 2011 club season, which I wasn’t willing to do. So I decided to put it off, and I decided that in the meantime, I’d give my body more cushion than I usually did. In the middle of my marathon training (January), the pain in my legs and in my shoulder (not from the marathon training, from the lifting) got really, really unbearable. So instead of running 5 days a week I’d run 2 or 3, depending on what my body felt comfortable with. I trimmed down the number of workouts I did per week.
The less I was working out, the more pissed off I got. I started to think to myself, dang man. Am I doing the right thing? I’m putting off this surgery because I don’t want to miss the club season, but it feels like I don’t even really care about ultimate anymore. And this marathon? I don’t even want to run it. On every single last one of my long runs, I feel like quitting within the first mile, no joke. Then I spend another mile making up excuses for why I should stop and turn around, and every single mile after that is spent wallowing in self-loathing/pity and wondering why I didn’t turn around when I had the chance.
So I mean, why was I putting off something kind of big for things that I didn’t seem to really love or even care about or was even remotely interested in?
Like I said, sometimes when you’re in a deep cave, in a dark crevasse, in a heavy place, the things you used to think you knew about yourself start to get shaken. You lose sight of the big and the little things. This isn’t one of those posts about how oh mylanta, I played in a really competitive spring league game (*snicker*, although we did just win our first two games WHILST PLAYING SAVAGE! And in the end we played one game 6 vs. 7 cause one of our guys had to leave for a wedding and boom we still crushed the other team) and I just totally revitalized my luv of ultimate lol! (meta lulz — Don’t worry, I understand when my posts are sometimes out there and mind-numbingly repetitive) … or at least I hope it doesn’t turn out to be that way.
Anyway.
The marathon is in about a week and a half (yikes) and I’m nothing but nervous about it. I’ve had a few long runs these past couple of weeks that have just wrecked me. I’m talking about I can’t walk for about two days after these runs. After one run about two weeks ago, I said to myself, I’m calling the race director and telling him/her that I want to switch to the half marathon, because I don’t think I can do the full 26.2. I just can’t physically or mentally do it.
And then a sort of off-beat question was posed to me, and it made me quit pitying myself. It didn’t make everything right all of a sudden, but it pointed me in the right direction. I was writing some short essays for a fellowship application, and most of it was the standard, “Talk about a leadership experience/challenge you’ve had” kind of thing and I gave them the usual bull. But the last question couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It was about telling the fellowship committee the tangible thing in the world you have to keep yourself balanced, and explaining why you chose that thing.
Whoa.
It really made me sit back and think. I started to run through different possibilities in my head. My relationships with family and friends, because they mean so much to me and I’d do anything for them? My iPod, because I love music? My blog, because I love to write, and it helps me deal? Maybe I’d say it was my porch, because that’s where I go when the world seems too big. Maybe it’s that picture I have of Krystal, Sam, Scott, and me standing outside Robinson the morning I left Stanford, or the picture of my Adams girls doing the Addams *snap*, both of which are sitting on my TV, facing my bed. I look around my room and it occurs to me that there are so many little material things that remind me of important things in my life. And thinking of all of those wonderful things in my life really made me feel happy and thankful but…
… then it really hit me.
The one tangible thing I have in this entire world that keeps me balanced like no other is running.
It may come as a surprise to some of you that I hate running, especially since I play a sport that requires so much of it, and I run marathons. But I can’t stand it. I’ve never enjoyed it. I started running in high school because someone suggested that it might help with my asthma. FOHWTS, clown! That could not have been further from the truth. I can’t even tell you how many races I had to drop out of because of severe asthma attacks. Foolishness. I also did it as a way to bond with my dad, who had taken up long distance running as a way to lose weight. Even though I didn’t particularly have a great time, I learned a lot from it, and even though I did it as a way to get closer to someone else, I found that it brought me closer to myself.
Unlike the countless little things I own that remind me of important things in my life — pictures that remind me of love, a disc that reminds me of friendship, a song that reminds me of calm, etc. etc. — running is the one thing that reminds me of ME. Not an emotion, or a memory, or a lesson, but the very core of me. Running reminds me of who I am, and it also teaches me a little more about myself every time I face a challenge. When I’ve had a rough day or week, or when I’m feeling overwhelmed or down about life, there’s nothing like a tough run to help me see with a little perspective. Towards the end of a long run, as I get more and more fatigued, it gets easier to think about giving up, and it gets easier for me to wonder if I can finish strong, or even finish at all. But instead of fearing that time and that wall, I relish it. I live for the time when I’ve hit the wall and the run asks me if I’m tough enough (*Jim Calhoun weird accent voice*) to finish, because that’s when I get the chance to answer.
Running reminds me of my mental toughness, and it continually teaches me about how far and how hard I can push my body. I’m reminded that nothing is impossible with a lot of heart and hard work, and I’m reminded that I’m capable of overcoming all sorts of obstacles. Every long run or every difficult sprint/interval/hill/whatever workout I do teaches me a little more about my mental fortitude, how much fight I’ve got, and how much deeper I can dig. Nothing compares to the feeling of finishing a tough run or a tough workout — nothing makes me feel more sure about who I am at the heart of me, even if I don’t come to the realization until after I stagger away from the red trash can of shame/vomit.
I read a quote the other day that I’m sort of afraid to say resonated with me. I’m afraid because it was uttered by none other than Mike “Pigeon Whisperer” Tyson — yikes. He said that being a good fighter is doing something you don’t like to do, but doing it like you love it, and forcing yourself to your limit and always testing yourself. That’s definitely my relationship with running. The marathon has always been a deeply personal journey for me. It’s not one I’ve talked about a whole lot, not because it was particularly life-changing in a negative way or traumatic or unmemorable, but just because it’s always been very personal and very difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t done it themselves.
I don’t run marathons necessarily because I think I can finish them in personal-record time. (In case you are delusional and don’t already know: No, I cannot finish anything in personal-record time. Unless the personal-record is a personal low, or if it’s finishing the consumption of some sort of delicious food in record fast time, then yes, I can do that.) Of course, I run hard and I run for a good finishing time every time I do another one of these durn things, but that’s a secondary goal for me. I run because I want to know what I’m made of. I run because I want to make sure I still have that fire inside of me. I run so that I will hit that wall, and so that I’ll keep running through it. That’s my favorite/least favorite part of the run, when it just gets hard as hell. When your legs start to lock up and you can feel your muscles start to twitch and seize. When you can feel like ten different blisters starting to form all at once (aaaaaaaand I just grossed out all of you, but that ish happens cause your socks get mad damp and you can’t change them because I can’t just carry around spare socks with me for 26.2, Coach Cathy, otherwise I would change the dang things). When you’re breathing so hard people know you’re coming from a few miles away. When all you can think about is what it’d feel like to sit down, or lay down, or just straight up collapse. When every single step is the most painful, least pleasurable step you’ve ever taken in the history of taking steps. When you’ve been tough enough for long enough, but the tough’s run out and you still have to keep fighting. How do you respond? What do you do?
That’s why I compete, too. Basketball, ultimate, whatever — competition forces me to ask myself what I’m made of and who I am, and it forces me to answer those questions — How do you respond? What do you do? — with the best of me: my toughness, my persistence, my resilience, my heart. I don’t mean to get all “Rudy” on you here, but my whole life I’ve been told that I’m not big enough or not strong enough or not tall enough or not fast enough or just straight up not athletic enough. But I’m able to do all the things I never could have dreamed of doing a few years ago — run marathons, play at college Nationals, get asked to guard another team’s best player — I may not do them “well” by society’s standard of “well”, but I am doing all those things. I can do them because I challenge myself, and because when those challenges ask me if I’m tough enough or if I want it enough or if I can keep pushing with nothing left in the tank, I answer with a resounding “yes”. That answer is for me — not for anyone else.
There’s a quote from a guy named Brian Glanville that sums up almost exactly why I compete and almost exactly why I love sports: “That is why athletics are important. They demonstrate the scope of human possibility, which is unlimited. The inconceivable is conceived, and then it is accomplished.”
Running and competing? They remind me that anything is possible if you can keep answering “yes”. Yes, you can do all things that are possible and impossible. Yes, you have what it takes, and yes, you can conquer anything that comes your way.
While I’m at it, I’ll have you know this: Sometimes those “yes’s” come from y’all, in different areas of my life. I watched “Julie & Julia” recently (because a. I love food and b. I love Meryl Streep, whatever), and oftentimes I feel like that Julie character, writing into the void and sending my thoughts into the ether, wondering if I’m just another one of those crazy people who uses the guise of a blog to cover up the fact that they’re really just talking to themselves with a different medium. But I believe that you’re out there. You don’t always make it known that you’re out there, but sometimes, when I say the right thing or when I say something that resonates with you, you let me know in your own little way, and it encourages me to keep sharing, to keep writing to figure this — whatever “this” is — all out.
I’m not that snarky, snotty little wannabe-funny punk I was when I started writing this blog three years ago. I’d like to believe that I’ve grown tremendously since then (in depth and girth *foghorn*). The anger and the fire I used to write with is now mostly directed at my television screen during basketball games, and the “humor”, “snark”, and “wit” have pretty much gone with my self-confidence. But I write because I think I have something to offer with my honesty, and I get a lot of that courage to write from you, reader(s?) (*foghorn* Every time something hilarious happens in my life, I imagine a foghorn going off…). Someone I don’t know and have never met at all, Kuh-lees, commented on my New Year’s post from last year about how even though uncertainty was creeping up the sides of my boat, I’d ride out the storm and I’d make it through everything alright.
It might not seem like a lot to you or to that commenter, but it meant everything to me.
It’s a less than savory time. But I’ll survive. I’ll come out of all this with battle scars and stories. I’ll come out of this because I’m strong, and I’ll also come out of it a little bit stronger. I’m finding my way down the right path again. I’ll keep running, and I’ll keep playing, and I’ll keep writing, and I hope you’re all still figuring everything out right along with me.
i want to darken in the skies
open the floodgates up
i want to change my mind
i want to be enough
i want the water in my eyes
i want to cry until the end of time
i want to let the rain come down, make a brand new ground
let the rain come down
let the rain come down, make a brand new ground
let the rain come down
