running to stand still
patterns, phases, recovery, release
[It’s throwback Sunday. As I noted last week, Sundays are for publishing/updating essays I had up at medium or other sites. Today’s is from early 2020. I have edited/updated it a bit to make it reflect the past two years.]
I used to run. I didn’t run to get in shape or stay in shape or for any physical health benefit. I ran because I needed somewhere to go. I needed forward momentum, to feel like I was pushing toward something instead staying stagnant. The fact that I ran down winding roads that took me back to my front door didn’t matter. For the moment, I was moving. For the half hour or so that my body could tolerate running, I was alone. It was me, my thoughts, my music, the pavement.
Things were bad. Things had been bad in my life before, but this was a different kind of bad because everything had been so good, so perfectly storybook before. Life descended into a bleakness so quickly I didn’t have time to process what was happening. There was a happiness in my world I had never felt before and then it was gone, replaced by a sense of despair, a feeling that everything had slipped from my hands just as I was learning to hold it tight. I cried a lot.
I started walking. Putting on my headphones and taking a walk around the block seemed like a good way to dissipate the negative adrenaline that my body was making. This wasn’t an adrenaline that made me feel like I could take on the world; it was a buzz of sorts, a low key humming that coursed through my body and caused my hands to shake and my thoughts to teeter toward destruction. I needed to kill this energy before it killed me. So I walked. I walked slow at first, looking at all the houses I was passing, wondering if the people inside those homes were happy or if their perfectly manicured lawns and gardens were just facades masking their unease. Was everyone like me? Were we all outwardly pleasant to each other, smiling from our driveways, sharing pointers on keeping hydrangea bushes healthy while inside we were choking back tears constantly? I’d walk at dusk and see the lights turn on in some of the houses and feel instant resentment toward the people in those living rooms existing in what appeared to be normal, complacent lives. How dare they.
So I walked faster, trying not to stare at the families playing basketball, the husband watering the lawn, the wife teaching the kid to ride a bicycle. I did not want to see this normalcy, this happiness. I wanted everyone to be miserable with me. I didn’t want to be alone in this. So I started running instead of walking, passing up those houses faster, the happy people turning to a blur, the warm, inviting homes just objects that I no longer lingered on. The movement felt good. It felt right. I could sense the negative energy escaping my body and for thirty minutes I felt free to let me emotions out, to feel everything I needed to feel, to make peace with my life.
I tried running to pounding, loud music. I made a playlist that included “Battery” by Metallica and The Exploited’s “Sex and Violence.” I thought the act of running deserved punishing beats. But those beats crossed up with my thoughts and I made another playlist, one with Manchester Orchestra’s “Simple Math” and The National’s “Baby, We’ll Be Fine.” Morose music for morose times. The cadence of the songs I chose was at odds with my pace, but it felt right. I cried a lot. My hot tears tried quickly as I ran and I would often have to slow my pace to catch my breath or lean against a light pole while I quietly sobbed, hoping none of my neighbors could see me. It was all so cathartic and draining. I’d round the corner at the end of my run, feeling like I’d just emptied myself of any kind of emotion, that I accomplished something by moving my body forward at that pace and then I’d see my house, once a place of refuge and peace, now a tumultuous monument to myriad failings, and it would all come back.
When I first met my ex-husband, he was very clear with me about being a recovering alcoholic. He had been sober many years at that point, and we both thought that was all behind him. But a high pressure job and a culture of drinking at that job became an invitation to open up that world again. It was a quick journey from sober to drunk for him. One day he left for a business meeting in Florida, the next night he called me from the aftermath of a poolside meeting, drunk. We entered a new, difficult phase of our relationship, of our lives.
I ran to get away from the sound of beer cans opening. I ran to escape the despair that hung over our home. I ran to gather myself, to get into a headspace where I could find the words I needed: get help. This has got to end. You’re killing yourself. You’re killing us. There was never a time where I thought of leaving him, there was never a time when he turned mean or angry when drunk. There was just this giant gulf between us, me on one side begging him to stop, reaching out my hand to guide him, and him on the other side, refusing to reach for my hand, too far gone to be able to stop.
I was in the midst of a furious run one day when Kevin Devine’s “Ballgame” came on shuffle. It’s a song ostensibly about alcoholism.
because I’m selfish enough to wanna get better
but I’m backwards enough to not take any steps to get there
and when you realize it’s a pattern and not a phase
it’s what you’ve become and it’s what you will stay
that’s ballgame
I’d listened to that song hundreds of times before but now it was something else, not just a song that came up on shuffle, but a sign. A push forward. An understanding. I hit repeat on it and kept running. I knew that I could not make my husband go for help. I knew that it wasn’t up to me to change him or his habits. I could give him an ultimatum but I was never any good at follow through and he knew that. But how long could I wait. How long could I live this life for, watching him slowly drink his way to death.
I kept running. I ran in the morning. I ran at night. I ran when I didn’t want to look at him lying on the couch anymore and I ran when I didn’t want to face the things I needed to face. And as I ran, I’d think about patterns and phases.
This went on for years. There were attempts at quitting drinking. There were seizures and hospital stays. There were new jobs and lost jobs, promises and oaths. During one of the quiet phases we went to Nevada and got married. But that phase became a pattern and then it was noisy again, and I would stop and start running according to how loud the noise in our lives was. The running quieted the noise, if just for a short time.
We lived our lives, sort of desperately, but sometimes in bursts of sober happiness. But that was all they were, bursts, and they would come and go and it would all implode again. There’d be another seizure, another go at sobriety, another way he’d disappoint himself, which would start the cycle all over again. I stayed through it all because for better or worse, in sickness and in health rang in my ears and, I loved him. Love doesn’t give in. Love doesn’t give up. Love makes you think anything is surmountable. We had too much together, too much good to ditch it all.
I came home from a run one day in August of 2016 and found a booklet on the table. It was pages and pages of AA meetings on Long Island. Some were circled. I went into the bathroom and cried. There was a relief, a watershed moment when I realized that he was making the decision, he was taking that step forward on his own. No one was forcing him, no one was giving him an ultimatum except himself.
That was almost seven years ago. He’s seven years sober, I suppose. I don’t know for sure. In the beginning of those seven years we hoped, we dreamed, we swore we’d get through it together. We’d get back to that space where we were content, where I didn’t have to wreck my knees running from him and our problems every day and night. I would always in those days think about “Ballgame” and it’s what you’ve become, and it’s what you will stay. I knew he would always be an alcoholic. He would always be recovering. I understood that and I kept it in mind when he went to meetings every morning and every night. He had to put in the work. I had to stand by. I stopped running. I sat at home, waiting for some magic moment when it would all click, when he wouldn’t be married to AA anymore, when we could resume our lives, go back to the way it was before.
But the magic moment never came, at least not for me. Instead, he left me in early 2021, taking his sobriety and his good years with him. When he left, I thought about running again, about getting out there, moving my legs and my body, letting the sadness out. Instead, I sunk into my couch and got on with the business of despairing in new and different ways. Running was no longer in the cards for me; I didn’t want it to be. Every crisis gets its own response.
I may not run anymore, but I do go for walks and I listen to my sad music while I look into the houses of my neighbors and wonder if they’re happy, if they’re settled or if there are things going on inside those homes that I might empathize with. But I no longer feel resentment when I see people out looking happy and content. I nod, I smile, I silently wish them well. I walk at a slow pace, taking everything in, enjoying the night air. I no longer feel the need to move fast, to feel the pavement pound beneath my feet, to push myself forward. The adrenaline is gone, the pent up emotions have all been spent. I’ll listen to “Baby We’ll Be Fine” with its refrain for I’m so sorry for everything and let out a little laugh each time because I’ll never hear those words.
No we won’t be fine. But I will be. I know, because I’m no longer running from anything.