Fear and control

I am worried. The 2008 Portland Marathon happened a couple of weeks ago which means that I have less than a year to the next one. Right now, I'm not even at the point where I can run one whole mile, much less 26.2 of them. I am afraid this goal may be bigger than I can handle...I don't want to give up, but I also don't want to set myself up for failure.

This marathon goal keeps bumping up against the fear. There is still so much of me that believes I will fail, that I can never be a runner, that I will always be exactly the same way I have always been. Argh! I don't want that...I want to run...I want to be awesome...I want to succeed.

I have been thinking about food more lately, which actually worries me because it's a very slippery slope between trying to eat healthier and all-out restriction dieting. Such a tempting idea, dieting. It seems like the perfectest, simplest way to just take control over your life. It's a false sense of control though...and at least for me, dieting would really throw my tenuous connection with my body's hunger and fullness signals (not to mention what it would like to eat vs. what I am willing to feed it on a diet) out of whack. Also my trainer said not to be restrictive right now and she actually said I should be eating more calories than I actually am, so I know dieting is not the right way to go. It's so, so tempting though. So tempting.

I think in this case I'm going to have to deal directly with the fear. It comes up when I think about going out for a run. It comes up every time I go to my trainer's for a session. It comes up hardcore when I think about mile eleven or mile twenty or mile twenty-six. Man, I don't know if I can do this...

Update: Okay, I just talked to Brian a little bit about changing my goal. I think I'm going to. I have a lot of little goals that would be glossed over or missed entirely if I just pushed myself to do the marathon this year, like running a whole 5k, running a whole 10k, finishing the marathon with a respectable time, actually becoming a runner and enjoying running instead of just gutting it out to fulfill this one marathon goal. The tough part is the feeling that I'm somehow giving up or letting myself down by changing my goal. But I guess Brian is right...I'm not exactly changing my goal, just changing my approach. I wonder what my trainer is going to say...

Super

My friendship landscape has changed dramatically over the past few weeks. First, W has somehow disappeared off the face of the planet or is perhaps an undercover spy on assignment or maybe trapped under something heavy and can't reach his phone. Either way, dude is incommunicado. As if that weren't distressing enough, T decided on Wednesday that being friends with me is too painful right now so she and I aren't speaking. At first my reaction to this news was serious upset, but the more I think about it, the more I can see it as an opportunity to let go more fully of the person I was when we were together and become something else.

So yeah, my two closest friends in the world are no longer...present. I'm a little worried that I'm not more upset by this situation...right now I feel pretty okay about the whole thing. Okay, that's not entirely true. I feel their absence pretty thoroughly and I'm definitely hurt by it, but something in my head is working overtime to keep me from thinking about it. It helps that I'm seeing someone new, so I'm distracted lately by thoughts of him, but if I take any time to sit and think about what's going on with T and W, I get sad pretty quickly.

I know, I know...everything will eventually be fine. blah.

Breathing room

I have been feeling kind of low and crappy for the past two weeks or so, but this afternoon my mood seems to have taken a turn for the better. Part of it, I think, is that now I can look at my week without being overwhelmed with how busy I'm going to be. The awesome thing about having dropped my classes is now I have the opportunity to explore other interests. I mentioned the jewelry classes (and I did sign up for one starting in a few weeks) but also I feel freed up to go running again and maybe try a yoga class or two.

The other big factor in my mood changing has got to be something universal or environmental or something, because almost everyone I have talked to over the past couple of weeks has confessed that they have been feeling down too. Maybe it's a phase of the moon thing, maybe it's astrology, or maybe it's just the weather changing. I certainly don't know for sure, but I find it fascinating that whatever it was seemed to affect everyone in a similar way at the same time.

Along those same lines, I have been reading in my latest Pema book about the practice of Tonglen and how it can affirm our interconnectedness with the rest of the world, which I find incredibly comforting. Here's a passage:

In it's essence, this practice is: when anything is painful or undesirable, breathe it in. In other words, you don't resist it. You surrender to yourself, you acknowledge who you are, you honor yourself. As unwanted feelings and emotions arise, you actually breathe them in and connect with what all humans feel. We all know what it is to feel pain in its many guises.

You breathe in for yourself, in the sense that pain is a personal and real experience, but simultaneously there's no doubt that you're developing your kinship with all beings. If you can know it in yourself you can know it in everyone. If you're in a jealous rage and you have the courage to breathe it in rather than blame it on someone else, the arrow you feel in your heart will tell you that there are people all over the world who are feeling exactly what you're feeling. This practice cuts through culture, economic status, intelligence, race, religion. People everywhere feel pain -- jealousy, anger, being left out, feeling lonely. Everybody feels it in the painful way you feel it. The story lines vary, but the underlying feeling is the same for us all.

So lately, when I've been feeling sad or overwhelmed or crappy, it helps to think about how it's not just me feeling this way. When I'm upset I have a kind of tunnel vision sometimes where I can only see a short distance in front of me and I feel like I'm always going to feel this terrible for the rest of my life. This idea of interconnectedness helps to remind me that other people have felt this way and their lives have gone on and they survived. Anyway, I'm not trying to push Buddhism on anybody, I just thought it was a cool idea.

Hope you're all well :)

xo,
C