You Can’t Solve Everything with a Good Run

Oh January, you are so cold, I say out loud as I check the weather app. It’s 7:45 a.m. and 19 degrees. This is Colorado. I could wait a few hours and run in slightly warmer conditions with the sun fully shining overhead, but the thought of waiting hours to shake off the nightmare-hangover is too hard to conceive.

I call them nightmare-hangovers because they linger – with tiny traces of memory and visceral pangs sneaking into my early waking hours the way a few stiff margaritas do the morning after a stupid night out. Yeah, the idea of delaying that hair-of-the-dog is not appealing at all.

“I run because there are times when it feels like there’s no other way to solve it.”

So, I savor the last few sips of my strong – oh so strong – French press coffee in the really big cup, grab the laundry basket that’s always overflowing with running gear, and start rummaging through for the most comfortable clothes to layer strategically.

It’s hard to click the “Start” button on my Garmin with the clumsy snowboarding mittens I use for warmth, and – if we’re going to be real – for tissues, but it buzzes and I’m off.  Tap dancing over ice mounds that the snowplow neglected to clear and tip-toeing most gingerly over ice patches formed by the thaw the day before, I settle into the rhythm of the run. I start to regulate my breathing and to accept the punishment of the wind as she aggressively pushes against my forward momentum. She can be quite the bitch.  But, I’m used to her in the neighborhood. She’s actually become quite a comfort in the years I’ve lived here.

It’s mile two and I look over and beyond the sleepy neighborhood up toward the white and purplish mountains. These are known as the Dakota Hogback. They are mysterious to me. Not considered the full-blown Rockies, but so close that they form a ridge you can trace with your eyes and your imagination until you get lost in their vast nothingness.

It’s that vast nothingness, at that precise moment, when I feel everything. I am suddenly hit with an inexplicable sense of urgency. I have so much to say. It’s been over a year since I’ve shared my experiences on the road – describing the filmstrip of my mind’s eye as I move through the world with a freedom I only get from running.

“I stopped writing because I was afraid of what I might say and – subsequently – what you might think.”

I stopped writing because I felt sick, conned, and completely vulnerable. So much had happened in a span of only a few short months that made everything I felt and knew and thought was real – about God, and people, and love, and trust – seem like it all happened in some alternate universe.

And, I had written about it as if I had it ALL figured out. Oh, running opened my eyes and made me whole. Just lace up and get outside. Find God along the trail and you’ve got the anecdote to what ails you. All you need is faith and God and the goodness of human beings. Yup, that’s what I felt when I ran. And I wrote about it all. Hallelujah.

I didn’t lie.  Every word you read was the truth. I do run to discover new hope. I do run because it helps me gain perspective and see the world as a little kinder and a little more beautiful. I was combining running and writing to help me make sense of the mess – the mess of memories, sadness, struggle, lost love, shame, inadequacies, and loneliness.

But, I was naïve. I wrote these stories as if my words would heal me and give me strength to move forward with no pain and no lingering side effects. But they didn’t. In a blink of an eye, I was blindsided by what those runs uncovered. Childhood abuse and neglect, fear of connection, pastoral abuse, abandonment, and loss. The more I pushed them down, the harder they came to the surface. Gross, horrific, shameful sewage.

After I was choked awake by breath-stealing nightmares every night and my dissociation had become so intense that I couldn’t speak in meetings, remember how I got to the store, or read anything longer than a paragraph, I knew I was suffering from something that couldn’t be fixed with positive thoughts and prayer and a beautiful sunrise. Even though I had convinced myself and everyone around me that this would work.

Through sobs, and heaving, and snot, and breathlessness, I started at the beginning with a therapist who landed on my Facebook like an angel from the blogosphere. She listened. She cried. And she assured me that I was going to get better. Only once before did I have the nerve to “tell my story” and that was to a pastor. Just a few years earlier. And, well, that’s a story for a whole other day.

Please do not misunderstand. I believe in the run. I believe it has always helped me emotionally regulate to where I am able to live a healthy life. But I am not whole, and the run does not make me whole. It solves some heartache, it eases some hurt, it helps uncover some beauty, but it is nothing more than a band aid.

The nightmares still come, but now I know why. And now I have the tools to quiet my head and heart when the devil tries to defeat the truth. I go to therapy every week. I do hard work. I still hurt, but I am not alone and I am not to blame.

If you hurt and cannot feel unhurt, please seek out professional help. You matter.  You are loved. You are not alone.