It's An Ultra, Not A 5K

SPOILER: NOT ABOUT RUNNING!!!

Shedding my skin hurts. Sometimes it takes a day or two, sometimes two or three weeks, and I never quite know where I’m going to end up. Say, raise your hand if you’ve ever known someone with a mental illness. Is everyone’s hand up? Whether you know it or not, your friend, coworker, neighbor, running buddy, teacher, cousin, barista, mail carrier—someone you know lives with a mental illness. It’s a has, not an is. He’s not obsessive-compulsive…he has it. She’s not schizophrenic…she has it. It’s not the most important of distinctions, but it makes a difference. When you feel like all you are is one big label, it’s amazing to remember that you are not the thing itself, but just a carrier.
If you are uncomfortable or upset at all by this topic, please please feel free to stop reading. I don’t want to force knowledge on anyone, and mental illness (I haven’t found a better term yet so if you have a suggestion I’m all ears) can be a touchy and painful topic. But I’m coming clean. One of my good friends reminded me once that although it’s scary as hell, telling 5 people means that you usually get at least 1 more on your team. This has been a long, hard 2 and a half weeks. There have been all nighters when I can’t seem to stop my mind from reeling and sometimes it seemed that my grasp on the world around was slipping. That’s a terrifying feeling, to look around and see that everything that was once familiar has become foreign. It scares me down to my bones thinking about the years ahead. And it makes me shudder to think of the people I could inadvertently bring this down on. The mornings are amazingly still, not peaceful but that calm in the eye of a storm, when I am unaware if I will be furious by 9am, in tears by 2. You know, someday I want to have a kid. While that is a ways off, I have to be considerate of that desire. And for a number of reasons, each more important than the last, right now the level of responsibility I feel that I have to keep myself even increases exponentially, daily, weekly, sometimes hourly. So I work to the bones trying to find the best ways to steady myself, relying on the meds as a safety net but not a fix all or a cure. It may be a chemical imbalance at its core but how I react to it is what makes me human. I run and I write, I breathe in and out, I get up everyday and go through the motions. Sometimes you have to fake it till you make it! My family and friends have been affected and that more than anything makes me sad. Makes me angry. It’s the old pattern, you see, where the ones who you love the most are the ones who inevitably end up hurting the most. Sometimes I cannot help but apologize, for nothing at all but for everything, for yesterday, and today, and tomorrow.
I have an amazing family. I have an amazing group of friends and coworkers who have formed a protective circle whenever I need one. There are 12 of them who I can call or email or text when there’s flare-up. That’s what we call it, a flare-up. We call them docs and talk-docs, swings, rough patches, taking care of yourself. We normalize it and joke about it; yup, it’s a we. They never look at me differently and they don’t seem to mind even when I call them at 2 in the morning. They don’t mind when I ask for an extra hug or show up for dinner or stand outside on a break and cry out of the sheer exhaustion of keeping my feet on the ground and my head up. They remind me to run for solace, eat even when I’m not hungry, and know to ask all the right questions. I don’t think I ever realized that I would get to this place, but tonight I look around up at the stars, and the clouds blowing in, and realize that once again I am home through no fault of my own. I realize that my hands were held and I didn’t feel when they let me go. The Warrior this last time reminded me that this is an ultra, not a 5k, and I am in it for the long haul. When the skin has been shed and the finish line crossed, raw and blistered, I get to return again to a better version of myself. And don’t we all do that, from time to time? She looked at me tonight and observed that you seem more like yourself again. The Worker noticed that I was smiling again. There you are. They don’t forget who I really am, even when I can’t remember, and I am flowingly fortunate to have them all.
So why am I writing this? Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure. There’s not much to be gained and a lot to lose. I’ve had friends walk away, scared or fed up, and I can’t blame them. Well. Maybe I can but I don’t, at least not anymore. I have all the tools I need and every time I hit a new rough patch I learn another way to even out, how to return to myself faster than the last time. At least that’s the hope and the goal. Like I said, I have the people and the tools and the safety nets. But I am lucky, and everyday I work with people who do not have those things. I watch so many of our clients self-medicate and leave their families in the wake of the spirals, the frustrations, the incontrollable inconsolable days, the nights when they too feel that they have left themselves behind. They live in a world that is next to normal but not quite, and I know that feeling. I can’t help but believe that they are indestructibly good. I can’t explain why, but I’m not ready to give up that faith just yet. So I guess I’m writing it for some of them, in a way. I’m not always good at looking at them with a tempered and compassionate eye, but I’m working on it. Maybe it’s an apology, maybe it’s asking for some patience. Maybe it’s just a quiet reminder to my own heart that some of these parents are not so different from myself. And if I can do it, so can they.
So thanks for reading. Thanks for your kindnesses, your patience, your shoulders and kicks in the rear. I can feel a wind fostering in the north. The rains are coming back and with them one more way to step beyond the bad days. There aren’t enough ways to tell you how I love the rain so much, and why the gray skies wrap a blanket around my shoulders. You know that smell right after a storm has passed, when the world smells sweet and earthy? Or the sound of a pounding deluge on the rood, when the thunder drowns out everything but the echoing thud of your heart? It is a promise of tomorrow. And I can’t help but dance along, hearing music of my own, profane and sacred and joyful. On the rainy days when I’m nowhere to be found, know that I am wrestling with the angels and the demons, and that once more I will emerge sweaty and breathless and stained with light.