Think Speak Run

Here again.

I went for a run this evening. This was a big deal. I gave birth only a few months ago, and my body is all lumpy and saggy and misshapen. Only misshapen in the sense that it doesn’t fit into regular clothes because it is still getting back to normal – my normal. I am trying to love my body. I have been able to love me in the last few years, the deep inner me of my soul and spirit. But loving my body? That’s a whole nother thing. I was always very slight growing up. Had many comments (horrible) about how I looked like a man. “Mann by name, man by nature”, they used to taunt. (Mann was my maiden name). I do not have big boobs. I try to feel relief that I will not need a wheelbarrow to cart them around when I’m older, but it doesn’t make me feel better about the fact that my stomach currently sticks out further than my bust. I don’t like poking fun at others’ shapes in order to feel better about my own either.(It does’t work.)

So I am too large for my own liking. I want to be fit and healthy because I want energy to run around with my kids. I am within the BMI for my height, and people say, “Ooh! You’ve lost all the weight!” while I try desperately to hold my stomach in, praying no-one will ask me when I’m due. So I need to be fit, I want to be fit, I have to be fit because I am going to run the half marathon later this year to raise support and awareness for survivors… And I need motivation, otherwise I find it hard to get off my butt. I have been struggling a lot the last week or two with the sadness. The anti-depressants gave me migraines, so I am ‘flying solo’ and trusting that God will see me through as He always has, but that David will be attuned to the tipping point. I have no pride left over going to see the doc for anti-ds. Each year I hope this will be the year when I won’t need them, because I will have moved that far forward in my healing. But who am I kidding? I am on a journey, and I cannot get further except one step at a time. It’s only been a few years since I was diagnosed with depression. Actually nine years. Wow. Where did that go? I know I’ve been depressed most of my life. But of course, no-one ever saw through the ‘happy’ face I learned to present. I had to go and tell the doc as much this time, and David went first, just in case I didn’t get up the guts to say help. So as you’ve figured by now, this post is a mish-mash of thoughts and feelings and motion and emotion from the last little while with me. I feel as if I’m talking to an audience, and feel that I ought to go back through this and edit it until it makes sense and is grammatically correct. Because that is what my mother would want. (She wouldn’t want this blog, but she would want my ‘work’ to be accurate in its use of English…….. Etc.) I made a commitment to myself when I started this that I would not fuss about whether or not it was grammatically correct. I told myself the content is more important than the vehicle. And I think that’s true. So you get me, as I am, a diamond still half in the rough, and therefore what I say is not polished. But I feel that I am being truly me for the first time ever – consistently.

So back to the point… I need to train for the half marathon. I am a runner, but I have had a running hiatus for a decade whilst I have had children. I used to run at school (boarding secondary school; fabulous runs with a lovely non-dodgy teacher). I ran three times a week, anywhere between 2 and 9 miles. I love to run. I am built for distance, although I can run the 400m in a not bad time. It is my ambition to run the London Marathon before I’m 40. Running the half marathon this year will be a major achievement. Maybe particularly so because it will be, on that day, 10 years exactly since I gave Ella to the foster mum. Since I left Ella in the foster mum’s arms. Since I lost my Beauty. Oh gosh. Why is this so hard to write? I have become more aware, as I’ve come out of the sleep of conditioning, and since I’ve started to end the denial and start to confront things, that things are not as even I have portrayed them. My story with Ella is not exactly as I thought. I am not the only one responsible, despite the fact that I was the only one there when it came to it and I had to leave. Satan and my family and her biological father and every other player in this game silently stepped back and said, “no no: it’s your fingerprints alone on this. We didn’t make you give her away. This was your choice. You got yourself into this situation. This is your choice; your doing.” They have made me the wielder of my own butchering knife. I hacked away at the situation, like Prince Charming at the woods surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle… But instead of getting through to rescue Ella or me or both of us from the nightmare, I only succeeded in hacking my own heart to pieces and potentially entombing hers from me forever. Interesting how I didn’t press the ‘c’ key hard enough, so I originally typed ‘Prince Harming’. But that’s a thought for another time.

So, running this half marathon is hugely significant, because I will be publicly acknowledging that I am a survivor, and that that is why I’m running. It will be poignant because of the Ella milestone. And then there’s the fact that I’ve called this thinkspeakrun , and yet have never mentioned running til now! Once a runner always a runner. I found an inner centredness as I warmed up before leaving the house; I have not felt that kind of poise since I was in labour. I noticed to myself that I was taking this seriously – taking me seriously. And that made me glad. I hate the word ‘glad’, but it’s the best one to describe the feeling.

So I have run. And I will run again. And I will get fit. And I will heal. And I will become more unafraid. And I will unashamedly think. I will unashamedly speak. And in October, I will unashamedly run.