Happy Hour

This morning’s drink: Tazo Zen green tea.

I am not an athlete, nor have I ever been mistaken for one. But I have always been a jogger to some extent – almost in the same way that I’m a smoker or a wino. Each have their place in combating the part of me than can turn into a head-case.

A lot of the distinction has depended on age, priorities and mental health. When I was in high school, I couldn’t buy cigarettes or alcohol, so I jogged around my neighborhood when I started to feel cloudy. When I started college, I began smoking more.. I think that just happens in college. But I noticed that it inhibited my running, so it never turned into a full-fledged habit. When I became of age, I actually started keeping alcohol in the house, but I didn’t like the smell of vodka in my sweat on morning runs. It never got out of control until I started dating more, and I finally went through a breakup that broke me down. But my age is reminding me that health insurance only covers so much, so I’m back to running, and I’m glad.

This holiday weekend, I had an unusual experience, though, that reminded me of my first bad breakup at the age of 18. I had been with him for a couple of years, and we had talked about marriage, etc. after college. But, of course, we grew apart, and it killed me. I started running A LOT. By the river, along Jackson Street, all over town, and in the gym. I was sort of like Forrest Gump – if I wasn’t waiting tables, I was running.

This one morning, I was all in my head, and I felt like I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t get hot enough, tired enough, sweaty enough, sore enough – I cranked the treadmill up as high as I could stand and screamed through my last mile until I couldn’t breath. As I walked it out, a fellow gym rat came up and just said, “Whatever it is, you aren’t going to outrun it.” All I could think was that I didn’t know it was so obvious.

This weekend, on the plane to Sacramento, I felt that suffocating headspace consume me. I was completely out of it the entire time – in line, on the plane, waiting for my father, on the drive home. Even though I hadn’t been working out very hard lately, if at all, I felt like I needed to go to the gym. I needed my brain to seep out of my pores along with the sweat, worry, embarrassment, frustration, loneliness and defeat. My dad set me loose, I made a bee-line to the gym, and ran for an hour straight for the first time in years. I just couldn’t stop running – I couldn’t get tired enough, sore enough, hot enough to burn it all out of me. Today is the third day in a row that I’ve tried to exorcise through exercise, but to no avail. I can’t put my finger on it, but like a cranial rum cake, something is soaking deep into my brain.

My life is better than it’s ever been, my siblings are finally getting their shit together, my parents understand what it means to eat healthy, and I have a tan. Yet all I can think is that I want out of this body. What the hell is wrong with me.