True Athletes….

The first time I heard the mantra “true athletes bear excruciating pain,” I was in labor. It was four-something in the morning, there was a raging blizzard happening outside the delivery room window, I had refused any pain meds, the contractions were one on top of another, and our son was making his world debut…eight weeks early. At some point, hunched over the edge of the bed, Jim whispered “true athletes bear excruciating pain.” With a fleet of nurses and two doctors for each of us standing by, the room wasn’t filled with the usual excitement that you see in movies like 9 Months or Father of the Bride Part 2. There simply wasn’t time to slow my pace so none of us knew how this was going to turn out. Why four doctors? Because it was determined early on that the OB resident and the pediatrics resident might need back up in this situation so the seasoned veterans were summoned from their beds in the middle of the night (did I mention the blizzard?) to take over in the event things went terribly wrong. At 6:14 AM, our son was born. All I really remember from the moment he was born was that they took him away without letting me see him, he didn’t cry at first, and when he finally did cry, the whole room erupted in applause. That is one cool birth story if you ask me and I handled it like I handle most of the challenges in my life, I pushed down and emotions I was feeling, dug deep, and did what I needed to do.

It has occurred to me lately, as I’ve been plagued with overuse injuries this summer, perhaps I take that mantra too far. Patellofemoral pain when I decided to run 12 miles within a 36 hour period in June, a sprained ankle in July because I kept running for days after the pain started…all the while saying to myself, true athletes bear excruciating pain. I’ve always known this about myself, I’ve always pushed myself physically beyond what’s probably reasonable so this Oprahesque Ah-ha moment isn’t really about what will no doubt go down in the books as the Injurious Summer of 2010. This Ah-ha moment is about how, while I battle through physical pain, I run away from confronting emotional pain as fast as I possibly can.

The second I see trouble on horizon, I bail. If I think you’re going to hurt me, all you will see is my back as I run away. And we’re not just talking a break or a cooling off period, we’re talking a clean burn. I rip up pictures, I throw away cards and letters, I delete numbers from my phone, I delete emails, I even cut out others that could remind me of you. I’m constantly on the run, looking for a fresh start. Until very recently, I thought this strategy was working for me. But Saturday I found myself battling epic hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-woman-scorned anger that I took out on a friend I’m having a difficult time with right now. After I sent an admittedly, ill-advised good-bye-you’ll-be-sorry-you-schmuck email, I had that Oprahesque Ah-ha moment…my anger wasn’t about my friend, it was about the collapse of my marriage. Shortly after that catharsis, I had an Oprahesque Ah-ha-ha moment (I blame therapy)as it dawned on me that this is precisely why people shouldn’t run from relationship to relationship…or at least I shouldn’t. If I were to jump into another relationship right now, that poor bastard would be the lucky recipient of all the unresolved feelings I’ve kept at bay while I’ve been logging hours on the treadmill…gentlemen, don’t all rush me at once.

So where does this leave me? I guess it leaves me with the knowledge that when I have to, I have the skills to push emotion aside, dig deep and get the job done. It also leaves me with the knowledge that sometimes I need to take that mantra to a new level and stop running from the people closest to me simply because I don’t want to deal with the pain that can come along with any relationship. I have the time to slow my pace. True athletes…finish it for me people…