American Girl

She waits another week to fall apart...

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. ~ Thomas Paine

You can imagine my annoyance when I got an email from my brother, with a link to the NYC Half Marathon, and a note saying "I signed you up."  Oh, and "You have to raise $1,500."  I sent him back a few choice words, and a suggestion that certainly it was not legal for him to forge my name on a legal agreement, and he of all people should know this.  Then he called, and I grumbled about it some more.  We both decided I was a bitch, and now here I am, training for a half marathon.

I got some new running shoes and woke up early last weekend to start breaking them in.  By the time I got to the end of the second block, I was tired.  My laces were too tight.  But I kept going.  It was windy and cold and unpleasant.  I'm tired of the rain.

I ran past the square in the sidewalk  that some silly homeowner left unsupervised except for a  "Wet Cement" sign, even though his home was right along the main road that takes all the kids to and from school.  That was about 25 years ago, and still, clear  as day, you can read "Pierre The Great" in one corner.  Pierre sat next to me in fifth grade.  I used to let him copy my spelling test for a piece of Bazooka bubble gum.  He was the only Pierre in our whole school, and quite possibly the whole town.  I remember he got called to the principal's office for that.   His mom taught CCD out of her house, and she always gave us Nutter Butters at the end.  She was awesome.

I ran through the school yard and thought about the morning that I was there early, and the janitor was on the roof.  He threw down to me all of the tennis balls that were up there, and it was like I'd won the lottery.  I think I had five tennis balls.  Everyone in my class was so impressed.  I gave one to Pierre.  So I'm thinking, and my lungs are totally burning at this point, that's all it took?   Happiness and joy and excitement used to come so easily.  Now I squelch them all down with a little brown bottle of pills.

Then I thought about the pharmacy, and how there was a big fight between two employees while I was waiting there last week.  The manager said "Go start looking for a new job" but no one thought she meant it.   Then I get my pills, and they look like this:



and I wonder if the argument was over how inept one must be to slap warning stickers on drugs in such a way?  I mean honestly, why bother?

So yeah, I'm back on the drugs, but only one and it seems to be working a lot better than the cocktail I was taking before.  I have hope that I will some day be off of this one too.

I ran past the chicken place and had an instant craving for fried chicken.   And biscuits.  I thought I probably should eat before running.  It started raining, just a light drizzle, but I just kept going.  I thought the girls were probably starting to wake up, and so my three favorite people were probably all snuggled in bed watching cartoons, and what on earth was I doing out here in the rain?

I don't even like running, truth be told.

I thought about my mom, and how one of the last things she said to me before she went into surgery  that she never work up from, was "Keep running with your brother.  It's his way of loving you."  This was before the marathon, which I did only because of these words.  I didn't think I'd be making a career out of it or anything.  In fact, I didn't think I'd ever do it again after that.  I thought about my brother, and how if he hadn't gone ahead and signed me up, I never would have agreed to this, and he knows it.  I flashed back to the last eight months and realized that he's been pretty lost since my mom died, and I've been so wrapped up in my own feelings of drowning in self pity that I barely even noticed.  He never just stops by anymore, and the email about the race was probably the first communication we'd had in two weeks.   This is really unheard of, for us.  I thought about how my biggest fear was that without the hub that was my mom, our family would just settle into our own separate routines and not be as close as we were, and how without even knowing it, I wasn't just letting it happen, but initiating it.  I was going off on my own, because it was easier to deal with my own pain and just lean on Ryan without carrying the weight of their pain too.

I almost got hit by a car.  Really.  I thought he had a stop sign.

I ran faster as I looped back home.  The burning was gone and my legs were tired, but my lungs were ok.  I got the smacking of my feet on the pavement to match the beat of the music in my ipod, and thought about how my entire ipod is filled with songs that have a drum beat that I can match my feet to.  The best one, that is perfectly my speed, is "Aimee"  You know, Whatchoo gonna do?  I don't even remember who sings it, but it matches my feet.  If I could put that song on an endless loop, I could probably run forever.

I decided that I'm going to get off these drugs and get my life back.  I'm going to start eating again, like a normal person.  I'm going to love my life.  It shouldn't be so hard.  It all starts with being ok.  I'm going to be ok.  I'm actually feeling quite good, truth be told.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 13:44 | link | comments (18) |