Bathed in darkness, listening to nothing but my struggling breath desperately flailing to find a rhythm with not even my treads making a noise. Each sparsely passing car, driving up from behind me and slowly passing me in the blackness of the early morning gives way to headlights lingering long enough to illuminate the wet concrete sidewalks fraught with cracks and dips and pockmarks and occasional debris; beach sand off to its sides poking through the grass like a bald head with thinning hair. Blackness again as the lights fade, feet guiding me to navigate the ground only by feeling and now my methodical inhales and exhales.
What should have been an easy, easy early morning run felt like a choking struggle for a variety of reasons.
I've been silent for the past month due to major life battles - with myself, relationships and health. Life has been acting out to the point where at times I worry that I'm a mere passenger; paying the fare without any rights to direct the driving forces of life which choose to take the bumpiest road with the most traffic, potholes and accidents. Where I normally would be infuriatingly frustrated, I am not.
Although I consider myself a staunch Atheist, I have been binging on Eastern Religion philosophies lately, for whatever reason. Although I do not believe in some being or guiding higher force, the mantras and lessons have been giving me a strange comfort and have been pointing my negative feelings about it all into better places:
Warriors accept that they do not know what is going to happen next. Warriors recognize that anger and fear and anxiety are mere walls that are manifested to cope with not wanting to face the unknown. Warriors embrace the unknown and the failures, and use them as opportunities to make themselves smarter, stronger.
It's quite an interesting thing, I think, the disconnect that oftentimes can happen between body and mind when life interjects itself, rudely. This is one of those unknowns that I am choosing to accept and to understand. It has been a bad year for running and I am at the point where my mind wants to GO, but my legs and body do not and are clearly protesting. What this means I think, is that I need to acknowledge that I need to physically heal from it all, nourish my physical self with rest and stretching and gentle care. I need to mentally nurture my screaming mind to calm, to bring myself back down to reality that I need to heal and focus on being positive again. I can only push myself as an entity so far before things begin to crumble, and perhaps what I'm learning from this battle is that acknowledging when things are crumbling is more important than forcing myself through it. Acceptance of these failures (or at least, "failures" to me) is useful because it will create strength and intelligence in different ways.
I've skipped two races and my twenty-fifth marathon in the past few weeks. This feels like failure to me. But I want to be a warrior and instead of plowing into battle, I'm studying it, understanding it, and am wisely acting accordingly, which is to rest and nourish and repair, rather than scream and cry and force. It's working so far. As a result, one of the positives of this battle is learning to let go of the negativity and difficulties of 2012 and getting ready to embrace the new year. 2013 is going to be very different, I know so, because I'm different from this already. What I'm still understanding how to learn is just how different. I do not know what will happen in the rest of this battle, but I accept it and will live with it as it chooses to exist. Perhaps this is a major step towards being better, because understanding its existence alone gives me a platform from which to work and grow and move.
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