Happy Friday, friends!
Once again writing to you from a sunny spot in my front yard. Regretting not putting on sunscreen, but we’re in too deep at this point. Pray for my shoulders.
Yesterday, I went for a run in my neighborhood, the same route I’ve run so many times in the last year. I used to mainly run on paths near the beach before the pandemic struck, but those were always so crowded that I started exploring random roads and side streets and sidewalks along bustling intersections in my neighborhood. I was almost always the only runner out there, and usually saw very few pedestrians. It was the backdrop of my pandemic stress, and my “my mom has cancer” anxiety. The streets I worked out my feelings and tried to get my life together on in an hour or so before making it back to my house. And, where I received more calls and texts and tears related to my mom’s final days than I care to remember. As a result, after she died, I stopped running in my neighborhood as much. I mean, it helped that I also got a stress fracture about two months later, but still… sticking to those same routes made running a literal jog down memory lane, except replace “memory” with “nightmare.”
In the last month or so, as I’ve gotten back into the swing of my normal weekly runs, I’ve started getting some miles in around those same familiar neighborhood routes, mainly because I’m sometimes too lazy to drive elsewhere to start my run… and also, because I think you can’t avoid the bad stuff forever. The only way out is through, more often than not. I don’t cry on these runs anymore (and Lordy, is there anything more embarrassing than crying while sweating in public?), but I do remember where those mile markers are, so to speak. Mental souvenirs of moments gone wrong, and a reminder that I lived to tell the story.
While I was running yesterday, on a stretch of road where I remembered getting a call from my mom after one of her oncologist appointments, I realized it was the very first one in about a year that I didn’t have a mask or buff with me to frantically cover my face when running too close to other people. (Thank you, new CDC guidelines!) It was sort of a weird lightbulb moment, and a sense of how far we have come. How much things have changed in just one year, and what has remained constant.
My entire life flipped upside down last year (dRaMa), and I know I’m not alone in that… a lot of peoples’ did, to varying degrees. And for a long, long time, not even my skin felt like my own. And running the same loops from when we were really in the thick of things reminds me of how cyclical life is; life stays the same almost as much as it changes. But that’s the beauty of life — the drum of time beats on, you know? With or without you, ready or not. While that can be a tough pill to swallow (because how dare everyone else continue to grow and experience joy while you feel like you’re out to sea, drowning) it’s also, in a sense, a relief. A relief to know the days will continue to come and go, and life goes on. Two things can be true at the same time.
On that note, wishing you all the loveliest of weekends! And if you can think of something more embarrassing than crying while exercising, do tell. 😅
Thank you for reading, truly.
Sending you all the yays,
Joelle
I have absolutely cried on runs and I am pretty confident I’ll do it again someday. I mean, 99 percent of my runs are cry-free but I have definitely experienced those tough moments that have led to some emotions surfacing during a workout! Embarrassing as it may be, I consider it a pretty healthy way to work through whatever is going on! Exercise is such a good stress reliever. So I’m officially in for the occasional teardrop run...