Embrace the Suck.

Sour.  Sickening.  Flushed.  Angry.  Upset.  Disappointed.

These are just some of the feelings that I have been feeling over the course of the past several months as I've been returning to running.  There was Boston.  Then there was Maine.  Then there was Lenox.  All disappointing.  All making my heart fall deep within my bones and then seeping down and around me on the hot pavement like pooling blood as I made my way across the finish line of each 26.2.  The clock, the clock, laughing in my face; spitting at me utter black poison of self defeating thoughts that would hang around my neck like the medal I had just received, a talisman of shame rather than joy.  My marathons, my children, have all fought me and have all failed me ever since returning to running since my foot surgery.  Each one has been more disappointing than the next, slow, slow, slow. 

My foot is still not healed.  Sickness still washes over me, chronic in nature this time with permanently damaged kidneys and subsequently, life has changed.  A lot.  I'm trying, but I'm also trying in quicksand.  It's been really difficult.

However, what I've come to realize is that in order to grow, to emerge from this vile place is to embrace the suck.  I've come to realize that to break through these clouds, I need to be my own ray of light and embrace the failures, embrace the horrendous times, laugh back and spit back at the clock and embrace the very, very small things about these awful episodes that go well, despite these events as a whole being wholly disappointing.

This past weekend I completed the Half Ironman that was the unravelling last year that lead to my foot surgery demise.  It was positive mental closure to conquer the race, although upon crossing the finish line, I was so utterly angry with my overall performance.  However, broken down, there were small things that appeared to glitter, contained within the swim, the bike and the run.  No panic and a steady pace.  No mechanical casualties and getting nutrition correct.  Having a foot issue, but otherwise running the entire distance.  Finishing with others rather than in the dead back.  Certainly not where I want to be or even what I am capable of or have completed in the past, but small successes, still. 

I'm trying my best, even if I'm outwardly disapproving of what is considered "my best" at present. 

And at least, at least, in the meantime I have somehow found what I used to think was the impossible:  my footsteps are no longer alone, my treads no longer solo.  From the bushes has emerged what I used to think was only an ethereal wild animal who could run alongside me, doesn't want to cage my unruly attempts and embraces the entire crazy package while not being afraid in the least.  From all of these shadows, somewhere in my midst of learning to embrace the suck, this brightness and promise has appeared, that is probably far deeper than I even realize at the moment.  It's a miracle honestly, because I've long ago deemed myself unlovable and although running does not love me back right now, I'm no longer chasing or swatting at it alone.  Distraction can in fact, can lead to some sort of reaction.  Who knew.

...

Changes are coming.  I can feel it in my bones, even if they won't arrive for awhile, but oh, they are coming.  I just laid to rest a horrible year by turning a year older.  In two weeks there is Number Thirty.  The supposed end of youth, the beginning of being wise, or at least the beginning where wrong moves and ill decisions can no longer be waved away.  I know that this particular marathon will not go as I want it to go, but buried in those hills is a woman who finishes what she starts, whose determination will carry her over the 26.2 and who will embrace the suck, to find the small things that ARE working; to carry those forward to the next race decade to make them CONTINUE working. 

The last time I was on those trails a possession occurred within me the night prior.  It was the night where I realized something BIG was about to happen.  My encounter with what I thought was a ghastly bandit, was really a brush with a Phantom that would haunt the rest of my summer and I still shiver to think about it today.  The sky was inky clear that night.  No breeze.  No ghosts.  Splintered wood beneath my feet of the threshold.  Musty summer sweaty air saturated with humidity.  I remember as I drunkenly clambered from cool leather and through the musty, warm, old, comfort to rest my head that changes were coming and they most certainly did.  What followed that summer was a sudden possessive, obsessive pursuit to piece my fragmented self back together.  Perhaps when I revisit those dusty trails in a few weeks, my whole self who now has chips and dents and shards but is oddly glued back together will smash all over again and then piece back correctly this time.  Or not.  Or maybe.  Or maybe no one will know until it is all hindsight.

Here's hoping things will hurry up and heal, or are at least are correctly pieced and setting and that we will be back to where we were by the time the heavy summer air is gone and the dark season approaches again. 

It's closer than we all think.