The Return of the Gunk

"The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege."
                                                                                                                   ---Marilynn Robinson

Just when I felt I shed a heavy coat of gunk in this year-long endeavor to de-gunk, I chose to pick up the mantle of shit again and place it squarely on my shoulders.

Because the truth is, as much as I don't want to admit it, the gunk cannot stick unless I let it, so it really is me choosing the gunk as much as it is the world dumping it.

If there is one thing I am not good at it's letting the gunk roll away from me like water flowing off an oily road. I am more like the summer soil in a warm storm, ready to incorporate into my being all that happens to come my way.

What part of me listens to the criticisms? Which part of me believes they are right? Who is that person in me that is willing to believe the hurtful  things others say?

Someone told me I just need to not care. To shut it out, create a facade of joviality.
So I worked on doing that, and I kept waiting for it to be easy, for it to be second-nature to just shut-off my heart, like shutting off the ignition before you get out of the car.

But it never came easily. And I finally realized that for me, I don't want it to get easy.

I am going to keep sitting in my vulnerability. I am going to keep pulling back the bones shielding my heart. And when I am knocked onto the floor, I am going to keep getting up.

And up.

And up.

The world is full of feelings. Not all of them are pleasant. But they are all worth it. You can only decipher the highest high when you have the measuring stick of the lowest low. And far be it from me to judge which is which.

Completing the Half-Marathon Challenge (aka Oh My Achin' Coccyx)

“I didn’t even know you owned a car,” said a fellow elementary school mom. "I never see you driving."

I hear this a lot. But actually, I do own a car. I just don’t use it very often. 

If I’m going somewhere in town,  I’m usually doing it on foot. Most likely pushing a kid in a jogger. We ride bikes or run to school, the grocery store, the library, the park. I like what it teaches my kids: there’s a self-determination to it, an invitation to define their own limitations. I also like knowing I can get where I need to go through the power of my own locomotion, and I want my kids to trust that about themselves too.

Which is why, five days before the last half-marathon of my birthday month challenge, it was so not in the plan to pass out in the laundry room and have a seizure.

I regained consciousness because I heard a woman's distressed voice saying “I think she’s seizing! I think she’s having a seizure!". Turns out that was my mom talking to my husband. He was holding me in his arms, thinking (he told me later) that he was watching me die. 

I still don’t know what happened. I started to feel like I had to puke so I went to the bathroom. When I came out, I fainted, dropping full-force to the tile floor on my tailbone. 

May I say definitively and slowly: OOOOUCH. Pain in the coccyx feels like someone punched you from the inside out. The image that comes to mind is my tailbone rotting inside me like a damaged tuber.

It’s very strange to go from feeling totally and happily in control of your body, to feeling as if you are a mere backseat driver… a backseat driver who was just kicked to the curb. It is confusing and more than a little scary. Is this what it will feel like to get older? A slow relinquishment of control over this vessel that allows me to have experiences?

I had been feeling very good prior to this "episode" so I did lots of bargaining with myself, lots of wishing I could ignore it. But fainting is not usual for me, neither are seizures, so I went to the doctor and had some blood tests.

Nothing conclusive was found. Stress? Adrenal shutdown? The body is mysterious.

After four days with no reoccurances, I talked to my doctor and got the clearance to do the last half-marathon… under one condition: someone would need to chaperone me. And handstand practice was banned until further notice. 

Life as a whitewater river guide for thirteen-plus years taught me—perhaps a little too well—how to live with discomfort. I’m not gonna say my ass felt good running those final 13.1 miles, but I am still glad I did it. My husband biked the first three miles with me but ran the rest of it by my side. We ran on the National Forest road that winds through the oaks, madrones, and pines behind our house in California. I was s-l-o-w but that made it easier to converse with my man.  

 

Birthday Month Half-Marathon challenge= done. Insert high-kick here.

Lessons learned: 

1. My left knee doesn't really love running that far every weekend

2. My mind really does. 

3. My life is better when I have a solid goal in my life, but better still when I have solid people in my life. 

4. Being stubborn is a positive attribute when it comes to running.

5. Happy is a crappy running song because it just makes you want to stop and dance.

Getting help with the candles on my b-day cake