Last year, if it were a Sunday, you would have found me running 20 or 30 km. You would have then found me here, telling you about that experience. The crisp morning air, the air beneath my feet, the air in my lungs. Breath like air. Life like air. The feeling that for once, just once in my life, I could conquer anything, even if it was just 30 km.
I can no longer run those miles. I feel a visceral punch when I see runners around me training for a marathon. It’s peak marathon season now, and my Inbox is full of promotional emails from organizers of some marathon or the other. I click unsubscribe. Click. Click. Click. This is pain, this loss.
Sometimes, when we lose something we love, we find that there’s so much emptiness that we find ourselves unmoored in a dystopian inner world of ache. In a session, my therapist asked me to draw what emptiness feels like. I thought I would be smart and showed her a blank paper. “This,” I said. She’s smarter. “Even emptiness occupies something. I would like to see what it occupies.”
What came from that experiment was a large blue circle, dark and heavy, concentric circles that flew from that circle, widening in lighter veins, a mingling of emotions, feelings, and breath.
It wasn’t blank or empty at all.
She was right. Emptiness is an invitation to create something anew. What we think of as empty, is often form. (To be Zen-like)
And from that emptiness of being unable to run marathons, I am discovering my body again. I don’t hold myself to rigid training routines. I run shorter, guided meditative runs, allowing my feet to carry me wherever they want to go without the need for speed, distance, and cadence bothering me.
I have fallen in love with bear crawls, cat crawls, monkey crawls, and, well, a lot of crawling. Learning animal movements or primal moves has helped make working out fun in ways I hadn’t before. (Also, I have developed a new-found respect for being upside down and crawling. Babies and animals – you rock)
I stretch with Pilates and limber up with Yoga. I walk every day. I clamber up trails and hike where I can. On many days, I allow myself to do nothing, like today, and observe the intense self-loathing and recrimination I feel with interest.
This is not to say that I no longer feel the emptiness of not running long-distance. No, that space is there. A cavernous room that will always remind me of the heaviness of loss.
But loss, when it leaves, will leave you with presence.
Believe this, dear reader. Loss will leave. Emptiness will fill up.
The only thing we have to do is figure out what to fill it up with.
May you fill the edges of your loss with love, life, and so much love. Hang in there with me.
The Emptiness
Mental Health, Musings / Sunday, November 17th, 2024
Having been fit at your age, I tell you that it is important to maintain your cardio and vascular as well as muscular and skeletal fitness. Knowing you, I’m sure you are already well aware of this and are finding ways to stay fit without hurting yourself.
Ah, Dave. I am trying. Trying.