WordPerv

It’s hard when you feel like your life is getting flushed down the toilet, when everything you know and love is changing to something unknown and unwanted. It’s easy to just want to crawl into a hole and die, or go to sleep and wake up in 5 years when it’s all in the past. Since none of us really have that option we instead have to find a way to survive. It will likely be a struggle and an uphill battle for a while, but SURVIVING is the important part.

Since I am currently going through a very tumultuous time in my life I am looking for ways to SURVIVE. Here’s what I’ve found:

#1: Find a friend who makes really good mojitos. Have her make you one or several. (Thank you Karin).

#2: Banish all depressing music for a while. It’s very hard to be upset and cry when you thump Eminem while driving.

#3: Walking your dog at the park in the sunshine is good for both of you. Have a friend who makes you laugh join you. (Thanks Tamera, I laugh hardest when I’m with you).

#4: Repeat your damn mantra: I will survive. I will survive. Play the damn song if it helps, but play the Cake version because it’s fun.

Anyone who thinks therapy is easy or fun is greatly mistaken. Therapy is about looking at yourself, your relationships, your decisions, your actions, and your thought-processes and finding the stuff you don’t like and then working to change it. It is painful. It is time consuming. It is hard work. Not only that, but you’re actually paying someone (often a large amount of money) to help you do this. And you do it on a regular basis, whether it’s weekly or monthly or anything in between. It often involves crying (hysterically or not), and occassionally involves yelling. In my case it also involves swearing, but this is because I swear like a sailor anyway. Like I said, it’s not fun. So, having just come from therapy I’m going to now do something a little more fun – like poke myself in the eye repeatedly with a sharpened pencil.

Mondays are always hard – it’s the beginning of a work week which means actually getting up and going to work. This week is especially hard because I am physically, mentally, and emotionally drained, my body is exhausted, and I just want to crawl into bed and stay there for about 5 years. Unfortunately that isn’t an option, so I continue to get up every day and go to work and live as a semi-functioning human being.

I got to work this morning around 7:30am, which is my usual time. I brought the charger to my PDA to work with me because I realized the battery was half-dead and it’s easier to plug it in at my desk at work than doing it at home. It was plugged in for less than a minute when I heard a loud POP!! and the lights on my cubicle went out, my computer screen went black, and I heard my coworker say, “What happened?!” Just then I looked down at the outlet and saw the tell-tale black marks. I had blown my charger. Reaching down I gingerly pulled it out of the wall (I was afraid of getting shocked) and then yelled “FUCK!!!!” about 10 times and then slammed my fist into my metal cabinet. Not the most mature reaction I realize, but I was pissed. It’s early Monday morning and I’ve just blown things up at work – what a way to start the week! But it gets better. I not only took out my cubicle, but 5 other coworkers lost power and I brought down a printer too. And they can’t flip the breaker until the maintenance people come to the building to ensure it’s okay due to those lovely little black marks from the surge/power explosion. Turns out a piece of metal came between my power cord and the outlet, which causes a small “explosion”. It then tripped the breaker and brought everything else down with it. Here is a picture of my destruction:

Happy Fucking Monday.

Today was my longest run to date – 16 miles. Overall it was a good run – I didn’t suffer the pain I did during my recent 13-mile run, which can be read here; and while I ran it a little slower than I would have liked, I’m overall pleased with it because I ran 16 miles today.

Miles 4-6 were hard because I hit a long stretch (from ATR to the golf course for those of my readers familiar with the base) where I was fighting a strong head wind and then as I turned a corner, a side wind.  

An amusing occurance happened at Mile 8, which usually is a lovely mile marker to see because it means I’m nearly done (having completed several 10-mile runs, my body seems to think 10 miles is the finish line). Usually seeing mile marker 8 brings a grin to my face. This time my brain said to my mouth, “Don’t get all excited. We’re only halfway done,” and with that the smile was supressed.

At Mile 10 my body was jumping for joy as this brought me back to my car. My brain kicked in quickly though and admonished my body for being excited as I still had six miles left to run. Dropping my shirt in my car and grabbing a 2nd Gatorade I was off.

The last 6 miles were very hard, I won’t lie. I fought a head wind, a hill, and hell, it was the last 6 miles of a 16-mile run so OF COURSE it was hard! Finishing it felt fantastic though, despite the aches I am feeling now, several hours later. Of course, the most frightening thing is that I’ll have to run an additional 10.2 miles on the day of the race, which is only 5 weeks away. As much as I’ve started to enjoy running again and as excited as I am to run the race so I can say, “I ran the Marine Corps Marathon!!”, I can’t wait for this race to be over so I can return to normal running distances – like 10k. You know, something reasonable…