I Will Remember You

I'm so tired, but I can't sleep. I'm standing on the edge of something much too deep. 

Four weeks from this very moment, I will be standing at the starting line of the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. 

Well, shit.

I have lived in San Diego for over six years now, and this is the one marathon I have wanted to run since moving here. The thing is, I grew up in a family of runners from Boston. The Boston Marathon is our thing. I even flew home to watch it this year. My grandfather ran it in 1964, an experience that merits its own book. My uncle Joey ran it. My mom finished the course FIVE times. And I've run it twice, once as a bandit and once registered, both times for charity. I didn't know it growing up, but I have high standards for marathons. I think that all marathons should be like Boston with about half a million people lining the course to cheer everybody on. So, when I moved to San Diego, I wanted to find a big race that I could look forward to each year. That race is the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon, and there's no better place to run it than in the city of its birth. 

2012: I didn't run.
2013: I planned on running until I injured my hip.
2014: I didn't run, though I could have.
2015: I didn't run; Mark and I were supposed to be in Camp Lejeune during the race.

2016 was my year! I registered about six months out from race day, and Mark was going to run it with me. We'd been saying for a few years that we wanted to run a marathon together, so it was officially on our bucket list. The plan was for him to register, too. Except he didn't because he was too busy gambling and hiding his lies to bother training. Then I got busy feeling like a lunatic and wasted most of my energy trying to figure out what I was doing wrong that had our marriage failing and my money disappearing at rapid speeds. Then, unbeknownst to me until recently, I spent all of my extra fuel harboring my hatred of Mark and his complete lack of trustworthiness, a volcano of anger that would only erupt after his suicide. 

So, registered and all, I barely trained. Fortunately, and with a bit of embarrassment, I took the opportunity to switch from the full to the half marathon, knowing that was a much safer distance. Truly, the most I'd done was maybe one ten-mile run a few months before race day. Attempting to run the full would've been irresponsible and unsafe, to say the least. My pride has carried me to a few finish lines, but it likely wouldn't have been enough that day. I already felt so defeated in so many areas of my life... my finances, my friendships, my happiness, not to mention my marriage... Running was the next thing on which the circumstances had taken their toll, and I was not willing to set myself up for failure, which would've been the case had I attempted the full marathon.

Running was something that had always been MINE. It was my solace. It instilled a sense of power and strength in me. It was THE thing to clear to my head. I loved that my relationship with Mark really began when he started running with me, well before we were even dating. It felt like a perfect fit. I mean, if I'm willing to have somebody join me in my favorite activity, an activity that I generally do alone, they must be special. It's got to be "meant to be", right?

WRONG!

Needless to say, my running was severely impacted by everything with Mark and his gambling, not to mention his suicide. I did run the Rock 'n' Roll half in 2016, and I was very proud of myself, but it felt blemished by the mess I was dealing with at home. I was undertrained and very stressed. Not even three weeks prior to the race, I found out that, despite making efforts that had him appear to be doing better and dealing with himself, Mark was not only still gambling, but still stealing.

Have I mentioned the stealing? It goes hand in hand with gambling, and it's quite often stealing from friends and family. Hence my previously mentioned failing friendships.

I was pissed at Mark the weekend of the race. I didn't even let him join me while I picked up my bib at the race expo on Saturday, though I was pleased to have him around on race day. After all, he knew how to support me with all my little idiosyncrasies and odd rituals before a run, and you've got to have somebody like that with you before a race. Plus, he was ridiculously proud of me. I have a hard time looking at any photo of Mark for very long, but the pictures I have of him holding a sign for me near the finish line are some of my least favorite. He was beaming with pride, but he looked old, which is saying something considering he was only twenty-three. He had gained weight, though most people would've looked at him and still seen a fairly fit guy. His hair was longer than ever, what with him no longer abiding by military standards, and he was exhausted. He was smiling and happy to brag about how his wife had just finished the race, but when I see those photos and remember that day, it feels tainted. I had wanted to do the full, but then I didn't. And I had wanted to do it with Mark, which also didn't happen. So I did the half. ALONE. 

Four weeks later, he was dead. And here I am, four weeks out from race day, nearly two years after Mark's suicide, and I'm pissed.

*This is one of those posts that I'm hoping will help me to work through some stuff, so bear with me.

To say I had a horrible time with running after Mark died is a gross understatement. I've never felt so disconnected from my body in my entire life. What was going on with me physically didn't line up in the least bit to what was going on with me mentally and emotionally. My mind would think one thing, and my body would do another. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Everything was wonky. Sleep was optional, though I seemed to have very little control over when I could actually opt for it. Food was hit or miss. Showering? Eh. And running was a mystery. It was quite often the only thing I wanted to do, but the majority of my attempts ended in exhaustion. I remember one mile that left me feeling like I had gained fifty pounds and was being pushed backwards and downwards into the ground below me by some invisible force. I cried during most of that mile, as well as the same distance dragging my feet back to my car. I thought that if I signed myself up for a race, maybe that would get me moving. So I did that in 2017 with the Dallas Marathon. Then I spent most of my training schedule denying that fact that I have PTSD. Naturally, a marathon wasn't looking too promising, so I switched to the half. AGAIN. 

But somewhere between the Dallas half last December and a conversation with my friend Charles, things shifted. I saw how lonely I'd been about my running, not to mention how angry I was at Mark. I wanted running to be MINE again, so at the start of the new year, I created some goals and shared them with a friend. And I registered myself for the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. 

Confession/slightly embarrassing admission: I've been relating to this race as my comeback run.

Training started off great. After a few years of random mileage, I pulled off seventy-five miles in January. February was pretty good. I ran two thirteen-milers in March and was just starting to get my during-race fuel handled. But it's been downhill since St. Patty's Day. Marathon training never goes as planned, but getting Bell's Palsy was completely off my radar. I expected hip injuries well before facial paralysis. I'm generally fine, but whenever I'm tired or not feeling 100%, the drooping in my face and squinting of my eye come back. It doesn't help that I have slipped slightly back into party-hardy mode in anxious anticipation of the two-year anniversary of Mark's suicide. Dates don't bug some people, but they do bother me. I KNOW July 2nd is coming, and though I KNOW the worst has already happened and Mark is already dead, it feels a bit like it's happening all over again. But more on that some other time. 

I've run seventeen miles in the last seven weeks. Even a non-runner can infer that things aren't looking so great in terms of marathon training. I'm not even sure that simply being in the countdown to race day constitutes any of what I'm doing as "marathon training". On the contrary, I seem to be doing the opposite. It's Sunday Runday, and I'm in bed blogging and feeling under the weather. My ear and head still hurt from the Bell's Palsy, and I SEEM to have either a cold or allergies, as evidenced by my asthma symptoms paying me a visit the last few weeks. 

Though that might also be anxiety...

I was hoping I'd have come to some sort of a-ha moment by the end of this, and I think I have because I finally just came up with a title for this post. Here's where I'm at:

I have a marathon in four weeks. I'm congested. My head hurts a bit. I've gained weight, and it's not muscle. I get tired from just about everything. Running is quite possibly against medical advice, but Mark is being honored with wear blue: run to remember at their spot on the course. This organization is quite marvelous, and you should Google it. Part of their goal is to create living memorials for the service members we've lost. In short, I am Mark's living memorial, and running is an expression of that. It couldn't be more ME. They line the course with pictures and flags in honor of fallen service members. I blubbered my way through that section when I ran the half in 2016, having NO CLUE that Mark would soon be one of the faces runners would pass. I have a very special friend signed up to hold Mark's flag, and I can't wait for race day purely for this. In part, it's the only reason I'm running; it feels a bit like we're finally running a marathon together, as well as being MY comeback run. I'm also dreading it and imagine I'll be crying the whole time, which will likely lead to indigestion and what I like to call 'an esophageal episode', given I have the world's most sensitive esophagus. But having him honored on the marathon course feels a bit to me like the event of the century. So, I'm doing it. I don't care if I have to walk the whole time. I don't care how long it takes me. I've run some incredibly slow marathons, but this one might take the cake. And I don't care.

One thing is certain: it's going to be an adventure.