Where to begin....

Over the years this blog has been as much about my mental health as it has about my running. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what to write about next, how to explain these strange times we live in. How to reflect where I am in my running journey, but also my mental health and just life in general. Face it we live in curious curious times. How many of us would have imagined we would become so much part of history. A global pandemic that has impacted the very fabric of our society but also us as individuals - we cannot and should not underestimate the times we live in. Then a global movement also began to rise out of the existing disruption. Black Lives Matter has become something none of us can ignore. It has challenged us almost as much as Covid-19 and it has the ability to divide us almost as much as lockdown, if we let it. 

I’ve kept a diary all throughout lockdown. Just daily notes of key things that have happened and some of my experiences. I plan on writing them up but that is not for this blog. Part of me also realised it was time to start writing my wider journey. Perhaps finally try and put pen to paper or fingers to keys to put down my story. Lockdown lethargy has meant I’ve done neither but I also now know how much discipline I need to give myself to achieve these goals. But again that is not for this blog. 

Back in March, when I last wrote we had little idea what lay ahead. We had all read about Italy and Spain. We all knew we were shifting in to a new reality. We talked of what would become the new normal. There is no new normal. There is just now. We told each other to be kind. To give ourselves space and time. We started to work from home. Or as I now like to think of it ‘live at work’. Small comforts became big comforts - our favourite restaurants still on deliveroo. A walk in the park (only one a day). Netflix releasing new programmes. The amazon delivery man keeping to his 24 hour promise. Learning that Gino was the name of my DPD driver. 

My blog at the start of lockdown dipped into our changes in human behaviour. How judgemental we all became. How watching others instead of ourselves became the new national past time. For some lockdown was a chance to finally release the need to be what others wanted them to be, but they couldn’t. Introverts excelled. Extroverts folded. Families who got on found that they missed each other and the distance was unbearable. Those who don’t need company blissfully watched days pass with no one. Loneliness became intolerable. The thought of seeing people again became unimaginable. We discovered we are individuals. No right way, or wrong way, to go through a collective experience of such magnitude our brains struggle (even now) to comprehend what we’ve lived through. 

Then the realities hit. The daily deaths rise. People you know die, people we knew died. Not necessarily Covid, but in these weird and strange times death becomes something even more other. A surreal, isolating experience. It’s hard to maintain any sense of self. Any sense of holding on to what you know. I tried to run. Honestly. I managed two runs during April - one of them nearly 10 miles. Then a smattering of 5ks in May. I reached June having run a total of 66 miles for the year. It was nearly the anniversary of my Race to the Tower where I did 53 in one go! 

During Lockdown I tried my hardest to live well. Our social media image showed deliveries, wine, takeaways. Those small comforts which hid a reality of long work hours. Stress. Fear. Anxiety. Isolation. I felt myself slipping in to old habits. My resilience failing. I started binge listening to blogs, books, Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle. Anything that would help me through. I found an online therapy site (Better Help) and signed up with a coronavirus discount. I found that solitude could bring rest and recuperation. No pressure to do things. No more shoulds. The coronacoaster ride had its ups and its downs. By the end of May i felt powerful. I used the term Lockdown Liberation. I found inspiring words and quotes. I found that doing things differently brings you different results. I found Enneagrams. I found a place for me. 

With the lifting of social restrictions I even found running with people back on the agenda. 5k and super slow. But it was company. Hard as I find seeing people ‘putting myself in the path of good’ is something I have to strive for. However uncomfortable it makes me, that connection you get from others is what keeps us alive. 

But then the world started to burn. Rightly so. Justly so. A new reality dawned for me. My white privilege. My inability to understand that the opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist’ but anti-racist. Uncomfortable questions. Difficult answers. Friend against friend. Family against family. Fear and the belief this questioning made you wrong. Made you defensive. Made you embarrassed. But actually, doing difficult things, learning to ask difficult questions, opening yourself up to consider new points of view just makes you grow. As runners we know that reaching hard goals isn’t easy. You go through pain. You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone. But it’s worth it in the end. So why shouldn’t it be the same for life. It isn’t asking us as individuals to apologise and feel shame. It’s just asking us to be vulnerable. To open ourselves up to new possibilities and ask the hard questions and listen. We’ve not been listening. I’ve not been listening. And it hurt. But it didn’t put my life in danger. It didn’t impact my ability to find work. It didn’t tell me I was worth less than someone else. But wait, yes it did. When I was young and realising I was gay all of those things stood in my way. I had no legal protection. I had no understanding from society. I had individuals who stood with me, told me it was okay. Told me they would help fight for my rights. So why now would I turn in any other direction than into that head wind?

It’s fucking hard. Let it burn. Let’s not be afraid of things that are ‘other’ to us. Let us just listen. On all sides. But no side trumps the other. No side is trying to trump the other. I promise. Do not fall in to the trap of thinking this is about supremacy or power. It is not. It is about equality. It is about policy and making change. Tolerance. Acceptance are all great. But they are not equality. We cannot educate others until we educate ourselves. 

And now where am I? Where are we? I thought in June it was all falling apart again but I’ve learned it’s an almighty wave, I will always find myself sinking, going under, panic rising inside as I struggle to break the surface. But I will also always make it up above the wave and back to the beach. And because I can, because I want to, I will take myself back out in to sea and go through it all again. Some times I’ll swim back to shore with no issues and then other days I’ll sink again. Or perhaps it will be raining and I’ll pack my bags and just go home instead of venturing into the sea. All of that is okay. 

Last sunday I packed my bag and headed off for a run. I’d heard from Lucy about the Kentish Loch - Langley Loch. This I had to see for myself so i set off on an adventure. Run/walking - feeling the fact I hadn’t really run anywhere in a month. But I found it and I found the thrill of a trail run where you don’t really know where you are or where you should be going. I planned to loop briefly onto the Greensand way to visit the goats at Buttercups and head home. But I got to the Greensand way at about 5 or 6 miles and just knew I wanted to go further. So I did. I ended up on a 13 mile route. Perhaps I could have even gone further. No training. No foresight. Just me, taking my time. No pressure. No judging myself or walking or stopping. Enjoying the views. Enjoying being out. Enjoying the feeling of not knowing if I would continue or stop. Liberation. Lockdown Liberation. Who knew? And who knows where it will take me next but, in that, I’m no longer afraid. 

Lockdown Lowdown

Well, this finds us all in a strange place doesn’t it? Lockdown. The world overwhelmed with a virus that we don’t fully understand, other than it spreads quickly, it kills many and it has resulted in a change to our reality that we probably still don’t fully comprehend. We can try and jump into a new reality or we can stop for a moment and allow ourselves to catch up. I know for one that I need to catch up. My mind is exploding and the reality I had found myself in has been replaced, not necessarily with something worse but with something so different if I don’t stop for a moment, well who knows?

Up to 2 weeks ago things were pretty normal. Back working, in something I was very much enjoying. Running again - including managing a half marathon in under 3 hours with no training. Even involved in parkrun again each weekend. 

And now? Now we’re allowed out for one piece of exercise a day - running, walking or on your bike. No more. At the moment allowed to go for as long as we need, although asked to be sensible and stay close to home. If we abuse it or if things get worse this will be taken away. It’s great people are now exercising regularly. We feel if we don’t take it we’ve somehow missed out and it’s a way of keeping us sane. If we used to swim, or spin then this is all we have. I never used to exercise every day, other than my walk to the station and home again. I had just started to run again regularly but now I’m using my once a day to go out with Keeley, my wife. We’ve all become attached to our one exercise a day, quite rightly as it’s all we have and if you think you’re going to lose something you hold on to what you’ve got. 

And in that is how we keep ourselves together. We need to hold on to what we’ve got. Our humanity. Our compassion. Our kindness. Before all this happened I’d finished reading Rising Strong by Brene Brown. Her focus on vulnerability, shame and daring greatly is just what we need right now. We are face down in the arena and this is where we need to pick ourselves up and face where we are, without falling into traps of nostalgia for a past that’s gone but also through the fundamental belief that everyone around us is doing the best they can. We are far from perfect. Each of us. We may not like everyone around us. How could we? Why should we? But we can believe that even those we think are arseholes are just doing the best they can, with the set of circumstances they’ve been given. 

I’ve made mistakes this week. I’ve been judgemental. Misunderstood. Angry. Sad. Falling into the rabbit warren of social media - like White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland “I’m late, I’m late” - late to understanding what matters, what’s important and what we need to hold on to. But I’m here now. I’m settling into to a new routine, making sure I give myself time and do what I need within the boundaries we’ve been set. And I know people think those boundaries don’t go far enough and I think likely they’ll get tighter, but we cannot judge others for following the new rules. We need to look at ourselves and our own behaviour. Trust others to look at theirs. Mud slinging. Personal politics. This isn’t the time for that. 

We can get through this, today on our walk we stood 2 metres way from Sally and had a lovely chat. We talked about trauma, the need to reflect, feel, and not close down or just move on - this is about processing. If we do that and support those around us through they’re own steps we can get through. If we judge and question and spend the next 6 weeks on social media, well we will get through but we’ll go insane.

 In the same way I’ve given up strava and comparing myself to people when I run, this is a time to stick to our own swim-lane. We can support the other swimmers in the pool, cheer when they finish and offer them encouragement but we don’t need to compare. We just need to be. That’s what will get us through, let’s just be....

Happy to be alive

Here I am, nearly a year on from when everything fell apart in my life. It was only the second week in February 2019 when I was shocked to hear a GP tell me “you’re not safe to go to work” - incredulous at first, but then too exhausted to argue. She was completely right. I had passed the point of no return and every little thing was another blow I couldn’t quite deal with, a nail in a coffin that I felt I was building myself. Just trying to work out the best time to put myself into it. We really don’t notice when our world begins to fall apart, I think that I have a fairly good understanding of what made this time so different but that’s in hindsight. At the time you’re just trying to keep going, day after day. You don’t want to let anyone down. You don’t want to seem a failure because you can’t cope. You don’t want to admit to yourself that actually its more serious and you’re not well. 

This is what makes serious depression a mental illness and not a passing moment that you’ll get over. There are other things, of course. And we all feel sad, depressed, anxious, lost at different moments in our lives. But these can be at very different levels and require very different interventions. 

What made 2019 different to all my other periods of being depressed wasn’t how deep and dark I fell, but how much I worked to really understand why and what was happening. Opening myself up to pain I had locked away. Exploring the very depths of my soul and my mind. I put the work in. And it has paid off. It has not been an easy journey and at times I really thought I wouldn’t make it this time. There is a big gulf between suicide ideation and actually killing yourself. I know that and I’ve always been more into thoughts, feelings but not believing I would carry them out. But this time I had a plan. I had a method. I had a motive, so I believed. I’ll never be 100% sure why I didn’t go through with it. I’m grateful that I didn’t. I’m grateful to those that gave me support in my darkest hours - Keeley, Tor, Jules and Lynn alongside my therapist Carolyn. I’m grateful to the others that watched from the sidelines - either virtually or in person and offered support in different ways. Not being one who is always open to such things I did hear every word, read every tweet, digest every message. 

Then I’m grateful to the books I read that helped put things in perspective. Of course I couldn’t read in my darkest days, I could barely get out of bed. But Audible became my friend and as I worked through my pain these words helped give perspective - most especially Lost Connections by Johann Hari and My Sh*t Therapist by Michelle Thomas. Michelle’s words to me whilst I was on holiday, telling me to “hold on” were literally a life saver. 

Despite all this support and probably the best therapy I’ve ever had in my life (Google EMDR it is amazing) - I know this one was my win. I did the work. I put the time in. I got up from the floor time after time and chose to keep living. I wanted to get through. And I have. I’ve learned lots about myself. My past. My inner demons. I know that happiness isn’t a thing we achieve. It’s something that comes to us in moments. Sometimes fleeting. Sometimes hard to grasp. We need, I need to stop chasing a dream. Living in the moment and accepting. Most of all accepting me. Knowing I am good enough. Knowing I’m like a bottle of L’Oreal and very much worth it. Brene Brown has begun to teach me about the power of vulnerability. With honesty comes risk. But if we don’t take those risks then we aren’t alive. And we certainly are never going to achieve things. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely free of depression. I certainly won’t ever fully understand all the emotions I feel and how to process them. But I believe I now have the routine and the tools to work within that. The waves will rock me and I may still feel like I’m sinking, but I know where the lifeboats are until this one is saved! 

This morning I went for a run. Did my hill training. No one knows about it because I’ve turned off my Strava. Even better I bumped into Sally and we had a fabulous chat about mental health. Connection is important (see reference above to Lost Connections). She had some very wise words about staying still. Not chasing after things. The best lesson I learned was to stop chasing a false idea of happiness. To accept me. To accept the world around me. I may be a grumpy bugger a lot of the time but I think it has come from fear. Fear of letting people see me. But frankly now everyone knows a lot about me thanks to this blog! And it’s so important to me that others do not fall into those traps of thinking. Positivity is wonderful. It’s important in the right circumstance. But it cannot fix things that are broken. You can. If you’re open to it. And once they’re fixed, or at least you’ve accepted them, that positivity will become what you need it to be, in the right place and time. Chasing after what you want in life may not bring it to you. Or you may run right past it without realising it is there all the time. Working out what your ideal life really involves brings up surprises. Then rather than chasing a dream you can work towards it. 

2019 was an amazing year for me. Out of my darkness came some of my greatest achievements. I stood on top of the world at the Half MDS and cried my heart out. Not only for what I was doing (and from fear) but with relief. That I had allowed myself to live so I could take part in something so amazing. That it took me to people I love having in my life now (you know who you are Von Trapps and MDSers). That I received so many messages of support and of love that I knew they must be true. It isn’t a lie to say I think about that race every day. My wife kindly gave me a fabulous memory photo book for Christmas made up of snaps from the race. I keep it by my bed so I can remember and be reminded of how it made me feel and how strong I really am. 

And now it’s a year on - but it wasn’t just about last year. This has been a lifetime in the making for me. For the first time though I know I’m in control. Leaving my job in November was a huge risk. But it was a giant leap of faith that paid off. I gained freedom to make the right decisions for me about my future. I no longer feel scared. I’m back feeling confident in who I am and what I can give to the world. I’m running, albeit slowly. I’m enjoying being back at parkrun as a participant and most of all as a volunteer. You never know I may even join the Selfies on a slow run one day (if they’ll have me back!). Or I won’t. That’s the joy of my life now. I’m not confined by what I should do. No more shoulds. No more just saying yes. The best thing about your story is that you get to write the ending....

Picture credits: Sow_ay, Cleo Wade and Brene Brown - and me!