Bummed Out

    You may have noticed that my output on this blog has been a little spotty the last few days. Or, who knows, maybe you didn’t — maybe there’s no you at all, here, maybe this is just me writing bullshit and putting it on the internet, where it will disappear like a drop of water sliding into an ocean. Maybe you is, ultimately, me. That’s a depressing thought.

    Anyway. The reason my output here has tapered is because I’ve been spiralling ever since I hurt my ankle. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I’ve been spiralling for years, and as a result I don’t cope very well with adversity. Maybe not. The problem, in the short term anyway, is that not being able to run has affected my happiness — already tenuous — very seriously. There’s a fair body of research that indicates serious exercise is as effective as antidepressants in lifting one’s mood. For me it’s been more effective. Antidepressants have never helped me one whit, as far as I can tell, but running helps me stay thin, it gives me a sense of accomplishment, and I’m convinced it positively changes the chemistry of my brain. It makes me happier. Not running makes me less happy. I haven’t been able to run in eight days.

    I’m realizing, too, that I had placed a lot of weight on running this upcoming marathon that it really couldn’t — or shouldn’t — bear. I last ran a marathon before I went to graduate school. In graduate school I was deeply unhappy, in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. I gained a lot of weight, I became very socially isolated, and I think it’s fair to say I barely scraped through at the end, when I was so depressed I had difficulty getting out of bed and going to class. Then, at the end of that experience — just days before my oral exams — my life was interrupted by a grisly tragedy that felt sort of like my fault. I left, and was given a degree basically because people felt bad for me. I moved back to Oregon, and started piecing my life back together. I think I had placed all my hopes and expectations — hopes of returning to normal, of making friends, of learning how to be in a committed relationship, of drinking less, of finishing my novel, of getting a real job, etc — on getting back into marathon shape. If I could just traverse those 26 miles outside Tucson, everything would be fine. No, it wouldn’t bring my neice or my foster brother back to life. No, it wouldn’t get me hired by NPR. No, it wouldn’t win me a National Book Award. But maybe I could stop feeling like shit about that stuff all the time, the way I have for a while now. Maybe I could look at myself in the mirror without thinking, What the fuck is wrong with you? Or something.

    All of this was probably unwise, of course, for a lot of reasons — not least of which was that this, injury, was always possible. It’s become clear to me now that I’m not going to be able to run a marathon in two months. I’m not able to run across the parking lot without severe pain, and if you can’t train, you can’t race. This is the third straight time that injury or illness has arrived at almost exactly the same moment, when I’m getting into the serious distance training, to derail my plans. I’ve now failed to run more marathons than I’ve succeeded in running. And the let down — the let down is terrible, not least because of how freighted this marathon training had become for me. I’ve had surging feelings of anger and grief over the last week or so, feelings that seem unrelated to a bad ankle sprain, but which I think kind of are. Not only do I not have the good brain chemistry mojo going right now, I also have this overwhelming feeling that I’m failing at my life. I’m never going to get any of it sorted out. I’ve screwed it all up forever. That’s what it feels like.

    When I hurt myself, I knew this was possible. I was jogging down Burnside listening to The Gist on my headphones, when my foot landed sideways and I brought down the entirety of my weight on my turned ankle. I felt a grinding, and then heard an audible pop, so loud it penetrated the podcast. I collapsed into the dirt. The first coherent thought I remember having was, I’m not going to be able to run this marathon. It’s all over.

    And so here I am. I am on edge all the time now. When people are loud in a bar I am disturbed, and then angry. When my cat wants to sit on my lap I just want her to go away. When I try to read a book by James Salter I think, I hate all these fucking white people. When Bernie Sanders comes up in conversation it pisses me off that idealists like him so much. Last night I dreamt I challenged Donald Trump to a fistfight. I am so fucking sick of the overtanned hippies in this town. I just wish that I could be someone else. Someone happier and thinner and less afraid. Someone less angry. Or, at the very least, someone whose ankles were stronger.