But not for the usual reasons
I desperately needed to get to the gym.
I had worked a bunch, gone on a fun weekend trip with my kids and returned in the wee hours of the morning with a full agenda to do before the work week began.
No big deal; I had done this before because I perform well with a deadline.
I had even gotten through expecting to find my adult special needs daughter dead in her apartment (she wasn’t and that’s another story) the day after we returned by sucking it up, holding it together and doing what comes next.
Because that’s what I do.
But today I needed to get to the gym. One of my favorite quotes is “The cure for anything is salt water; sweat, tears or the sea” (Isak Dinesen) and I so needed to sweat.
The workout of the day (WOD) started OK; I was “off” a little bit, but not unexpectedly, given the previous 24 hours. I headed outside for the laps programmed into the WOD and my legs and lungs took up the familiar rhythm. 100 meters later I was a sobbing mess.
Let me back up a bit:
As a kid I felt emotions deeply; I loved ferociously, grieved keenly and when angered it burned hot. All these were too intense for my mother and I was often told I wasn’t feeling what…I was feeling.
This is how I learned to not trust myself.
I made it through high school without any fatal mistakes and became a nurse, throwing myself into the career I would love for over forty years. The skill of “stuffing” what I was feeling was actually very useful at work; it enabled me to move from profound sadness and death with one patient to happy and calm with another without skipping a beat.
This alternating between life/death at work and basic home activities begged for coping mechanisms and I turned to running. I had quit smoking years before and couldn’t afford all the alcohol I knew it would take to keep the demons at bay.
Plus, the neighbors would talk.
In the meantime, of course I had married a narcissist; my “trusting-my-gut-radar” was under-developed and here I was again, being told that what I felt was incorrect. Thankfully the radar didn’t conk out completely although I did acquire an auto-immune disorder as a result of the toxic relationship.
Everything in the marriage was my fault, so I had more reasons to run but was puzzled when emotions started bubbling to the surface, especially on my long runs. What was that about?
It took me a while to put it together: I had learned to stuff uncomfortable emotions like grief and anger so well I had to get my brain into autopilot in order to let them out.
Fast forward through difficult times; learning to trust my gut again saved my life and kept me sane but I still didn’t know how to feel difficult emotions.
That sounds so ridiculous!
I remember being able to do so as a kid and then there came the long years of learning to not-feel; will it ever become natural to easily have them again?
I don’t know.
But now I know how to get there: Cardio.
It still takes me by surprise when I end up emotional and have learned to just let it out like a big thunderstorm. One of my favorite songs starts off “I can see clearly now…” and that’s how I feel afterwards.
So. An odd little tool I have found on my way back to wholeness.
The Universe has my back
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