This time last year the insurance was being sorted out on my house and the demolition was beginning. This photo was mid october, this exact day last year the house was still sitting under tarps and waiting, waiting for Llyod's of London to give the go ahead on the policy.
And now i'm sitting here in my brand new bedroom with all the pretty things i picked out. It was a wild ride this past year. As october and my birthday approach i reflect on all that has happened.
I really have made some incredible steps forward and backward. When i ran into Neil at BlogHer his first words were; "It's been a very dramatic year for you!" And yes, yes it has.
This morning i was puttering about, showering, contemplating the state of my life. Shane's house is about to sell and he's bought a new one right behind mine. The idea of the purchase is he can rent it out or he can live there. We vascillate on what to do.
I have days where i embrace this new beginning for us and there are mornings, like today, where i question the wisdom of all this. There are moments that i miss being single. That i long for those quiet evenings alone. Where i didn't have to worry if i've been loving enough.
Shane says i'm self-centered. That i only think about my feelings and not those of the people around me. I'm not sure if that's right or not. Maybe i changed in our years apart. Maybe he did. I think we both did and now we are getting to know each other again. Sure, we are comfortable around each other and know most everything about the other, but. But, some things have changed forever. We no longer have a simple kind of love. It's complicated and sloppy.
And sometimes it's really hard. And sometimes a good wrestle makes it all okay.
When i was a little girl i ate whatever i wanted much like my children do now. Meaning they eat lots of white food with ketchup on it. What i mean is they don't worry about calories and fat and vitamins and minerals. They know that i take care of all that for them.
I have been very lucky in my adult life. I have never had to worry about my weight, but i have always been a healthy eater and splurge in moderation.
But, i didn't really take care of myself. I didn't exercise, i didn't sleep enough, i smoked for far too long and used alcohol as a crutch through too many bad times.
Yesterday i was given a gift. I was given my right leg back and my goal of running a half marathon six months after i started running. I am not going to take this gift lightly. Injuring myself reminded me that this body is precious and i need to love and respect it if i want the second half of my life to be filled with beauty and joy.
I have done three runs now and i already feel the anxiety that was building up inside me abating. I'm going to spend the next 11 days fueling up and taking every herbal supplement available to me and i will cross that finish line – even if it takes me a whole day.
My body is broken. Well, it's not broken, but it's not working the way i want it too. I haven't been for a proper run in weeks. I'm in physio three times a week and every single time we fix one problem something else goes wrong.
The well oiled machine is not what it used to be. It struck me last night, this is me getting older. This is what happens when you don't exercise for twenty years and then throw your body out on the pavement five times a week for six months. Sure it looks great and, until recently, feels great – but, it will give you the big kick in the ass at some point.
This is the first time i've set a goal, or seen something i want, and failed at it. I know this is all sounding overly dramatic and not that big of a deal. But, for me, this is such a huge disappointment. It's crushing me.
You see i used to try and keep my heart well by taking medicine or madly flailing about in the world. Bouncing from medication to medication, hiding away in my room, crying in the shower. And then i started running and i felt better. Way better. I could focus on kids and family and love without it feeling anything but great. When i am running i feel light and fast and like nothing can stop me. I feel alive.
I felt better than i have in my whole life. I felt like what i imagine the average person feels like. And it was awesome.
And so you see not running is making my heart hurt again and everything else feels a little more difficult and i'm not even sure i'm going to get better.
There is beauty in the break down.
We have all had our ups and downs, some of us have had the break down. Sometimes it happens so fast it is nothing but traumatic.
Sometimes it happens so slowly you don't even see it coming. Then one day a paper cup thrown on the side of the road causes you to stumble and cry. Someone threw that cup away and left it there to rot, to add another chip to the crap that lines the road. But the cup is wasting away, becoming part of the dirt. A banana slug crawls through a hole in the bottom.
The cup becomes something beautiful that you never would have cared about if your life hadn't, over days, weeks, months, closed in on itself until all there was was you, the road and the discarded remnants of peoples lives.
"Hey! Respond to my Facebook request!" he yelled to me from his little office space we created in the hall outside my bedroom.
"Huh?"
"I changed my relationship status to married to you and you need to confirm it…"
"Oh, i'll just click ignore!"
And with a "Bitch!" and a click there i was married again.
There wasn't any grand romantic gesture, there was just us and social media and hope.
Just one evening earlier we had declared ourselves broken up, for good, after a very rocky few weeks. I woke up in the morning puffy eyed and sick to my stomach listening to him shuffle the kids out the door to the school bus. Listening, thinking "this will be the last time i hear those sounds." The sounds of a whole family.
He came upstairs to talk. "Let's make a plan." I rolled over and hugged him, the full weight of me and my emotional burden pressing down on his chest. We didn't talk, we just stayed there for a while.
We ended up spending the day together. Him playing hooky from work. We talked, we laughed, we did a slow dance and decided to give it this one last and true effort.
Nothing romantic. Just us versus each other. Us together.