I know I've started to get horrible at keep up with my posts. It's something I told myself I wouldn't do. "You can't lag behind." "You have to keep it positive, informative, motivational, and interesting." Yet, somehow life sucks your time away and before you know it, it's almost a month since your last post. While I'm getting excited about warming weather and getting outdoors to run again, I thought I'd share a little more intimate side of this runner. Not because I want to air my dirty laundry or vent my frustrations to the World Wide Web, but because I am a person and have ups and downs, and because maybe, just maybe someone out there is going through something rough and my candid post helps them feel like they're not alone.
I feel like just as my world is coming together, it's falling apart. For the first time in my life I took accountability. I took control over my health, my career, and ran with it. As I have been fighting to lose the weight and gain fitness, falling in love with running as my release and sense of grounding, I have been losing my marriage. Somewhere between finding myself and regaining a side of me I lost so long ago, I have either let down or lost the interest of my husband. We've had a rough 12 years, but it seems so ironic that now that I am getting fit, losing weight and going back to college to get a better career he no longer seems interested in maintaining our relationship. It just knocks the wind out of me to think that just when things looked like a horizon to a "happily ever after" the carpet gets yanked out from beneath me, sending me sprawling across self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy and ultimately loneliness.
It's not physical, or so he says. He says I am in better shape and more beautiful than the day we married. Yet, he doesn't have a sense of affection towards me. Maybe it's because of all we've been through, maybe it's a midlife crisis. It was only last fall when he accused me of loving running more than loving him. And as laughable as I find that notion, I somehow think he's distancing himself because he doesn't want to see a stronger more driven side of me. Maybe he's intimidated? Maybe he's jealous of my new lifestyle while he refuses to give up smoking and greasy food? And while he tells me I could be happier with someone else, I find it so hard to just give up the family we've built, to throw away 12 years of our life together and just forget about someone who knows me so intimately.
It hurts. It hurts to go to bed alone while he plays virtual golf on the computer. It hurts to not have him wrap his arms around me. It hurts that he refuses to try working out with me or even come with me to a run. It hurts that he would not even consider cheering me on during a half marathon. And what do I do? I run. I pound the hurt into the pavement. I try to outrun the aching in my heart until the aching in my lungs numbs all other pain. I lift. I think of some of the hurtful and painful verbal jabs he's taken directly at my heart strings and pull or press out another rep. I push myself because it's what I have left.
I have me. I'm doing this for me. I began my journey and my lifestyle change for me. For my kids. To be the role model I should have been all along. To feel healthy and not be afraid of dying from obesity or diabetes or heart trouble. They say that the ones who are intimidated by you are the ones trying to hold you back. It's that much harder when it's the ones you love the most, but it's true. We all have critics and nay-sayers. We all have doubters and disbelievers. We have those who are supposed to love us and encourage us, secretly sabotaging us or trying to keep us from outpacing or outshining them. I love my husband. Despite the heart-breaking talks of divorce. Despite feeling like I'm a horrible selfish person, I love him. I love our memories of times where we laugh, where we're best friends. I cling to those and don't want to give up, but I'm not giving up on me either. I don't want to think it's a matter of choosing his unhealthy lifestyle to be closer to him or choosing my lifestyle to be a healthier me. I hope that's not the answer. I hope it doesn't boil down to that....
because I would really miss him.
