I’m struggling and I don’t think I’m capable of hiding it or sugarcoating it any more. You might have seen the below post on Instagram a few weeks ago, when I really started to feel the cracks spreading.
“One of us is faking her smile. She was supposed to run for up to 2 hours this morning but made it half a mile before she just gave up. She walked for a while and then headed back to her car. She’s just done. Running isn’t fun. She’s tired of constant pain. She’s frustrated with her slow pace and the size of the body she’s in right now. She’s realizing that she’s pretty depressed. She’s backsliding while those around her get faster and stronger and she doesn’t know what to do. If it doesn’t involve spending as many hours as possible in bed, she’s not interested. Not that any amount of sleep can fix whatever is wrong. Her heart isn’t in anything. She’s rambling in her Instagram post because she’s lost and feeling vulnerable and sorry for herself. She hasn’t done the work to stay healthy and get strong so being injured and slow is not a surprise. But it still hurts on every level. She doesn’t know how much worse it has to get before she’ll be fed up enough to take control and make changes. Today is not that day. Today she’ll change back into her pajamas and crawl back into the safety of her bed. Maybe tomorrow? #overshare #injuredrunner #mentalhealthmatters”
It isn’t just one thing, it never is. I’m still grieving Mark daily, and I feel lost without him. Three years later and I still feel lost. Disconnected. Lonely. I have always leaned on running to get me through the good and bad of life and it has given me so much joy. Unfortunately, a string of injuries has really fucked up that coping mechanism for me. I can’t run or walk without pain right now. I dread my runs. I avoid runs, shortening them as soon as I’m out there or cancelling entirely. I am supposed to be knee deep in 50k training right now and I can’t even get myself out the door for 30 minutes of movement. When there is a 100% chance of running in pain, what would you choose?
I feel trapped in a body I don’t love. It feels too big and too soft and too slow and I don’t know how to change it. Or, more likely, I don’t have the emotional and physical capacity to take the actions needed to change it. I’ve felt too big for a long time, but after taking a month off running in September (and eating my way through that break), I find myself at a weight I’ve never seen before. A weight well beyond what I swore I’d kill myself if I ever got to because the worst thing I felt I could be was fat. Fat wasn’t safe. Running kept the worst of these fears at bay but not any longer. My running clothes don’t fit anymore, I’ve had to buy a few new pieces in a new size for the times I do manage to get out the door.
The paces of all my runs have slowed drastically. My fitness feels nonexistent. I’ve stopped running for miles and started running for time, in hopes that it might be mentally easier. No such luck. I still count down the minutes until I can stop. All I really want is to be home and to be left alone. But when I am alone I am on my phone texting friends or scrolling social media, anything to keep my mind away from feeling or thinking. I don’t want to see anyone, but I don’t want to sit alone with myself either. That makes navigating my friendships and my relationship w H complicated and stressful. I constantly feel like a disappointment.
I don’t really know what else to say. I sleep a lot. Too much. I’ve gone to bed as early as 7 pm and slept over 12 hours at a time, regularly. I promise myself each morning that I can go straight to bed after work, and that is the only thought that gets me up and moving. I can’t think about how many hours there are until I can go to bed again. I try to take my workday in hour long chunks, otherwise the anxiety of getting through the remainder of the day becomes too much. It all sounds so obvious to me, as I write it, but for months now this just felt like the norm. I was still able to “function” so I wasn’t depressed. Sure I didn’t brush my teeth or shower every day and I struggle to exercise regularly and I’m isolating from friends and making questionable lifestyle choices but that doesn’t mean I’m depressed. I can’t remember the last time I cried, so it can’t be that bad. I’m not in therapy so it can’t be that bad. I’m taking my meds so it can’t be that bad.
I’ve conditioned myself that this version of normal is healthy and it isn’t. I do not need 14 hours of sleep a night. It is not okay to go weeks without seeing my closest friends. I can’t fuel this broken body on take out. Running is supposed to be something I want to and enjoy doing. Work should not involve a constant level of anxiety coupled with impostor syndrome. What really bothers me, the only thing that actually bothers me, is how little I seem to care. I am not motivated to change. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t. I actually admitted it to myself last week and thought “fuck, we’re in trouble.”
I know what I need to do to heal from my injuries. I know what I need to go to become stronger. I know what I need to do to properly fuel an athlete’s body. But I’m too far down to do anything about it. I spend every ounce of energy operating in survival mode or escape mode. I still don’t know how to exist in a world where Mark does not. Everything reminds me that he’s gone. I’m living in NC because he’s dead. I work two jobs because he’s dead. I’m dating someone else because he’s dead. I’ve done what I had to do to survive and I’ve gotten myself this far. But where exactly is that? Is this “normal” on the nonexistent timeline of grief?
I’d like to stop taking my meds because I don’t think this is what I’m supposed to feel like but I also know that they are buffering me from feeling much much worse so I can’t just stop. I have an appointment with my psychiatrist tomorrow and I plan to tell her everything. What I don’t want her to do is add another medication to the mix. Clearly pills are not the answer, but it is also her job to prescribe them so here we are. She’ll ask about therapy and I’ll tell her it isn’t happening. She’ll ask about the running and I’ll tell her how unhappy it makes me. Running and unhappy in the same sentence? Never thought it was possible. Right now few things make me “happy” and by happy I mean I stop feeling for a while. I escape. I’m not proud of my choices these days but I also feel like I’m doing the best that I am capable of doing and I’m being transparent with my treatment team.
I guess this is a call for help? I don’t know what I or anyone else can do, though. I feel like we’re running out of options and at some point I’m as good as I’m going to get. I hate to think that is where we are, that this is my new normal, but I’ve also been operating this way for months so in a way it is. All I can do today is take it hour by hour, stay hydrated, and don’t do anything rash. I suppose I’ll know more tomorrow morning, start creating some kind of plan. But in the meantime, this is where I am. I think I need some help.