I went for a run today. It was every bit as unpleasant as I remember, but the unpleasantness had a different quality than it used to, before the mortal peril.
When I fired up my running app, it asked me if I truly did want to start with Week One, Day One, or if I wanted to continue with Week Nine. No, thank you. Let’s not go back to 2018. Ever.
I’d run that same measly set of eight one-minute running intervals in April 2018, about three months after my unprovoked pulmonary embolism. “The clots are gone,” they said. “You should be back to normal,” they said.
That beautiful spring day I managed to shuffle along slowly, which, I thought, was better than a poke in the eye.
And when I got home, I puttered around the garden, casually lifting a weed here or there, enjoying the sunshine, imagining the summer color, writing projects I’d have time to finish after the end of the semester. I was still waking early to write, but I was frustrated that every time I’d get some momentum with my book I’d have to pack up to go to campus. That week in April, we were finishing up Into the Woods, and Sondheim is not my favorite—which made me all the more eager. I wanted to be done with that, done with the school year. Because I thought then I’d feel better, would not have to nap every day.
But that night, after those tiny running intervals and my hour or so lingering—I wouldn’t use the term “working,” for sure—in the garden, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Everything hurt, every joint. It hurt to lie in any position. It hurt to stand. It hurt to sit. And because I was on anticoagulants, I was not able to take Ibuprofen.
I would continue running through the summer, not realizing I’d been had. Duped. Mount Verstovia was when I realized, struggling up and then down that mountain, after running all summer.
Today it seemed like time to start again. Because of the suitors.
Eight years ago, I recorded two moments at work, and these glimpses into my life before, courtesy of Facebook, are so strange and lovely.
11: 37am · Our recordings archives guy went MIA, so I’m scrambling to edit and distribute CDs to our performers. Like, all of them, from every concert this fall. It is fidgety, time consuming work, but having Seth here with me in the booth, quietly reading the Odyssey, somehow makes everything better.
Especially now that both boys are gone, I feel a kind of fondness for the time spent not-talking, simply being together. At the same time, how quaint: CDs!
Two hours later, Seth evidently announced:
1:44pm · “The suitors are dead. Let’s have lunch.”
And that’s why I decided to get off my bum and find the running shoes. For months I’ve been overwhelmed by how many prongs I’ve had to use in my multi-pronged approach to feeling well again. So many. Yoga? Check. Physical Therapy? Check. Sensible diet? Check. Quit every activity except for work? Check.
But the long wait is over, and while my house is not littered with the bloody corpses of those pesky suitors, the weight has lifted. I am not distracted, disconnected, and it does feel time to attend to the more simple tasks. A wee run. And now some lunch.