On Letting Go

". . . the second you’re comfortable is the second that something-- somewhere-- probably needs to give. Or you need to let something go. Or you need to set up your life to look a little different so that the elements will push you more and stretch you more and grow you more. The second you start thinking life is this comfortable little journey is the second you stop growing.

 

 . . . Living happens outside the comfort zone. That dumb little box you think is so safe. What's so safe about a stale life? Change will only happen when you ditch the comfort zone. When you accept the pain. When you decide to do it, just do it, without even knowing what the outcome will be or if your precious heart is gonna be all sorts of mangled on the other side. Stop refusing the challenge." - HannahBrencher.

 

 

Two weeks ago Wednesday, I had to let something go.  It was my best furfriend of 8 years, a very unique kitty so un-cat-like that even avowed Dog People mourned his departure.  He had been sick for a very long time, and his cancer and heart disease just made him sicker and sicker and sicker. So I had a lot of time to give him all my attention and love. And I had a lot of time to let go.  And, while I faced the inevitability that he was going - and then gone - the whole time I knew something  tremendously beautiful was going to come of it.

 

I had no choice about Arnie dying.  That was going to happen eventually, cancer and heart disease or not.  But I did have the choice to let go.

 

In that year while he grew sicker, I struggled to keep up my routines. Grad school, training, full time job, and two sick kitties were a lot of work, especially with my parents both being seriously ill, a relationship, and my own chronic illnesses rearing their ugly heads more than usual.  When he was finally at peace, as heavy my heart and empty my pillow were (still are) without him, the fear and anxiety and pain that had occupied my conscious and subconscious thoughts were transformed into something else. Light. Forgiveness. Hope for the future. Belief in my own strength.

 

And something else I never expected.

 

Letting Arnie go made me realize that there were a lot of other less-important things I was hanging onto. Like my Type-A-ness. My fear of what people would think about how well things were going with the guy I was seeing.  Suddenly things like that, or just being human - needing extra time on a school assignment, taking off a day (from work or workouts or happy hour or even makeup) when I genuinely needed it - suddenly, those weren't such bad things. 

 

What would happen, I wondered, if I chose to let those kind of things go, too?  Lord knows I've had more than a year to do it.

 

I was on a training ride this weekend. We were riding about 30 miles, which is about half of what I have been riding on the weekends. And on top of that I realized that I was a good 2 miles per hour slower than I used to be.  To a non-cyclist, I realize that 2 miles per hour doesn't sound like much. And to all of my fellow athlete bloggers, this probably sounds incredibly disappointing.  Uninspiring. Anticlimactic.  I mean, I had such plans for this year - like qualifying for nationals for a 3rd time. And most of you are out there getting faster.  Stronger. Going farther. Even winning things.  And here I am, hardly training at all, realizing how much slower I've gotten.

 

But instead of bemoaning that the way I have been, I look back and feel thankful for the perspective.   I'd gotten so quick that I could at least start out most of my rides with the "race" riders.  And I did this during radioactive iodine scans and all kinds of follow-ups for my thyroid cancer.  Granted, I did this in a less urban area with no grad school to worry about.  But still. I faced down a lot of tall obstacles to get as strong as I did, and I have lost almost all of it. 

 

I shared this picture on Facebook the other day because it made me LOL. 
Wes responded, "Being awesome is not a 5k.  It is a marathon."
So is making progress with training.

 

The crazy thing is, if you'd asked me about my progress back then, I'd have told you "yeah, I have a really long way to go."  In fact, sometimes you'd catch me pitching a hissy about not riding fast enough because a new medicine made me feel bad.  My expectations for myself were so high that I didn't have time to feel as happy as I should have been about being right where I was.  And so, if there's anything I'm forcing myself to let go of, it's expectations.  I've said before that I'm a "labeler."  Well, to hell with labels, too.

 

The crazier thing is, I'm not upset about the less-training-time and the slower-training-paces. I mean, I'm not going to stop training tomorrow.  I'm in this for the long haul.  So I'm terrifically excited about how much I have accomplished.  I'm happy for the "break." I'm grateful for the perspective that has allowed me to see what a great last two training years I had.  I'm terrifyingly excited about what I'll be capable of when I push through this burst of illness and grad school and once again have time to concentrate on bettering myself physically. 

 

And I'm realistic enough to know that I may never get to where I was ever again, either. The exciting part was that I got there at all. With a lot of things that should have kept me from even trying.  Which kinda makes me feel like I could do . . . . well . . . .anything.

 

There's still going to be sadness to muddle through. The loss of a loved one is never over just because we choose to let go. They still live on in our hearts, and letting them go opens us up to fill that space with the new perspective that can only be offered by embracing all the happy memories we shared with them. Letting go just allows those happy memories to flood in. To replace some of the pain. To help us feel less sadness for losing and more gratitude for having had.

 

I'll remember Arnie for a lot of things.  The longest-lasting of those may just be that letting him go allowed me to see all of this more clearly.

 

" . . . Living happens outside the comfort zone. That dumb little box you think is so safe. What's so safe about a stale life? Change will only happen when you ditch the comfort zone. When you accept the pain. When you decide to do it, just do it, without even knowing what the outcome will be or if your precious heart is gonna be all sorts of mangled on the other side. Stop refusing the challenge."

Pompeii

Way back in the Wayback Machine, I used to post some entries called The Week in Song Lyrics.  It's exactly what it sounds like:  I'd share song lyrics that had been going through my head that seemed to summarize the week.

When you're training for a long-distance race, your runs last hours. Songs that you hear while you're running tend to get stuck in your head (whether they're on your MP3 player, the radio, whatever you listen to).  Because long runs really force you to get out of your head and zone out - and sometimes feel a lot of discomfort - that song may have the ability to freeze a particular moment during a run into your brain - whether it was the beginning, the end, the good or the bad.  It's almost like music has the ability to create a mental time capsule. I still think of 16-mile runs when I hear certain tunes.

Lately there's been a song running through my head that I didn't even realize I knew.  I guess music has the power to subliminally inject itself into our lives.  When I first found out Mister Arnie was dying, I was having a pretty hard time sleeping.  I'd wake up in the middle of the night crying and worried.  I'm not saying that still doesn't happen, or won't happen when he's finally gone, but in those first days it was the hardest. 

I recall one night in particular where I was lying there, with him sleeping wrapped around my head on my pillow like he always does, and it was as if someone had turned on a radio in the room and started me awake. And as the song flowed through my head I felt myself semi-consciously processing their personal meaning to me.

These are the lyrics . . .

I was left to my own devices
Many days fell away with nothing to show
And the walls kept tumbling down
In the city that we love
 Great clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above

But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
You've been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

This is how the actual conversation went . . .

I was left to my own devices
These are decisions I have to make, and burdens I have to carry, completely on my own.

Many days fell away with nothing to show
And man, have I been trying to put in my training, but for the first time in a long time, maybe, in my life, I legitimately don't have time, excuses, or the physical energy to "push through."  And it sure feels like I have nothing to show for the first two months of this year.

And the walls kept tumbling down
In the city that we love
The bad news just kept flowing in.  First my brother, then mom, then dad, then me, then Girlie, then Arnie.

 Great clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above
And, just when I thought it had stabilized, Arnie and I were sucked in again. 
But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And I did close my eyes.  And I tried to go back to sleep.

And if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
You've been here before?
Wait, I have been here before. 
Last year, and 10 years ago when I first got sick.  And I got so sick. And I made it through. And here I am, awake at 4am, better off than I have ever been in so many ways.
But I'm sick. And Arnie's really sick.  And I don't know what I'm going to do.

How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How the hell am I?

How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
And I realized why this song (which is by Bastille, by the way; it's called Pompeii) was in my head.  It was because how am I gonna be an optimist about this? is the biggest - and possibly most important - question I ask myself on just about any day.

Candide's Voltaire. I bring this character up all the time.  Voltaire is a cynic, even a pessimist.  And his sidekick, Pangloss, is a real Pollyanna.  At one point during the book, probably annoyed by Pangloss's persistent positivity, Voltaire turns to Pangloss and tells Pangloss that optimism "is a mania for insisting things are good when they're wretched."

So here I am.  I'm afflicted with this mania, this mania for insisting things are good when they're . . . well  . . . pretty wretched.   And it has to be a mania.  I mean, it just has to.  Because, even as hard as it is going to be to drop Arnie off for his surgery tomorrow, and hope it goes well, and hope it buys him more years and not just miserable months, and even when I eventually lose him, some part of me can't help thinking that something, just something, absolutely beautiful is going to come out of this, and even while I'm thinking all of this another part of me knows that something already has.

And if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
You've been here before?

Chronicles of a Clinically Dizzy Blonde AKA One Bite at a Time

If you believe good things will happen, they will. It doesn't matter if that's because good things actually happen, or you choose to make the things that happen, good.

So I haven't been around much lately.  I've really needed to make the time to write, but I just couldn't find the time, or the heart.

It's been a rough few weeks.

As anyone living with chronic illnesses can tell you, life can be somewhat unpredictable.  You'll be cruising along, feeling blessedly normal and free from sickness or symptom, and then you will be completely derailed for days, weeks, sometimes months.  The best way to get through is to remind yourself that a better day/week/month may be just ahead.

 

I had great plans for 2014.  I dubbed it "The Year of Yes" and decided - at least after grad school is over - I'm going to do really seize the moment and do everything and anything fun and social that I can physically and financially afford.  Even if it's not something I'd normally agree to.
 
I also wanted to try to qualify for Nationals again - and this time GO.  I even put money aside to try to do it. 

Apparently, 2014 did not have the same plan for me.  My ears have bothered me since fall and my physicians were working to confirm my diagnosis of Meniere's Disease so that future treatment approaches can be planned.  But after a 3rd hearing test and a VNG (below), the ENT decided that this time the debilitating tinnitus, imbalance, dizziness, pressure in my ears, and headache must be related to my migraines and not my ears.

So, after bouncing around from walk-in clinic with ear infections and pressure, then to the ENT, I'm back where I started 10 years ago: the neurologist.

It's extremely frustrating.  I could feel great, then BAM! Outta nowhere the dizziness, fullness in my ears, and ringing begins.  They tell me eventually I also could have some hearing loss. My inner ears react poorly to both cold or hot or my head rolling from side to side.  Sometimes it lasts for the better part of months.

Swimming is sometimes very uncomfortable.  I almost cancelled my cruise a few weeks back. I keep chugging along, doing as much as I can.  But I am definitely not anywhere back to actually "training." 

Last year I said the same thing, but I promise I was training more.  No 5ks have been done, and I have NO plans for an "accidental century" (although I did an accidental metric century a few weeks back.)

Life has been generally turbulent for everyone around me.  Mom and Dad have somewhat stabilized but still need some treatments; the little cat is stable but still sometimes throws up everything she eats.  And, unfortunately, we got some sad news a few weeks ago - my big cat, Mister Arnie, is now terminal.  His cancer is spreading all over his body and his only hope is a splenectomy.  He's been my best friend for 8 years, so this has been a very hard few weeks for me.  He may have just a few months left with us, although the surgery could buy him years.  As with my own chronic illness, we just don't know what will happen.

But, as my dad always told me, there's only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

The unfortunate truth is this: when you decide to make any big decision in life, you roll the dice.  No matter how well-informed and pragmatic you are, the outcome is never 100% certain and some decisions are just very difficult.   Whether you choose to do something as major as adopt a pet, or as small as go for a bike ride in the middle of a bad vertigo/migraine attack, things could go so many different ways. 

Like last year, maybe this won't be a year of focus on bettering myself or making PR's.  Arnie's treatments will take everything I have, so I probably won't be able to celebrate my nomination to a special consortium by attending the meeting in Hawaii in May.  But here's what I have learned from  2013: things CAN be very good AND very bad at the same time.  Whether that means that good things actually happen, or you just choose to make the things that happen good.

All you can do is the best you can with what you have, and take one bite at a time.

And give lots of love to one of the finest little furry gentlemen that's ever lived.

So, that's what I'll be doing.