Notes From a Sober Runner #2
I’m running down the sidewalk on a Thursday morning. Cars pass by in the opposite direction—people going about their mornings, heading to their jobs, pulling into the parking lot of the donut shop on the corner. The newness of the day casts its own kind of optimism over the otherwise banal. I look ahead to the next streetlight, mentally calculating whether I’ll be able to make it through the crosswalk before it turns red. Suddenly, my foot catches on an uneven part of the sidewalk and my world is thrown into abrupt chaos. I throw my hands out to catch myself and come down hard on the concrete.
When I last reported on my running progress, I was taking a week off from marathon training to rest my shins. A few days after submitting that piece, I went to the climbing gym with my partner. Though my relationship with climbing is different from my relationship with running (the latter being more of a solitary endeavor for me, and the former being much more technically demanding), I love both pursuits dearly. Climbing has allowed me to have a healthier relationship with fear, and I’ve recently been working through that fear in the context of bouldering, in which the climber works on short, 10-15 foot routes (called “problems”) without the security of a rope or harness. For a long time, I’d get to the top of a challenging problem and, rather than attempt the final, often tricky move and risk falling, I’d downclimb and drop onto the padded mat below.
On this particular evening, I was working on a problem that was right at the edge of my ability. I finally got to the penultimate hold and, deciding that it was time that I suck it up and go for it, I threw myself towards the top of the wall. Unfortunately, the hold I had intended to grab was far smoother than I had assumed, and I suddenly found myself at the mercy of gravity. The odd angle of the fall caused me to roll sideways onto my ankles, as opposed to backwards onto my (much less delicate) butt. By the next morning, it was apparent that I had strained my right ankle. It would be another week or so off from running. Though I should have been grateful for the relative mildness of the injury (and on a logical level, I was), I was also frustrated. I was quickly eating into the buffer that I had built for myself, meaning that the rest of my marathon training would have to go more or less perfectly.
I have a tendency to catastrophize. It’s taken a lot of introspection and meditation to get to the point where I’m able to recognize the beginnings of a negative thought spiral. As much as I wish that this mere fact of awareness would make it easy to stop the flood of anxious rumination, it can feel nearly impossible. I also have an embarrassing habit of believing that, if I just tick off the boxes and follow the plan I’ve laid out for myself, things will turn out okay.
In early sobriety, I often fell prey to this line of thinking, to disappointing results. Free from the haze of alcohol, my Type A personality bubbled to the surface. I felt compelled to do all the things. I kept a planner. I went to talk therapy AND physical therapy. I quit sugar and deleted social media from my phone and got up early to make gratitude lists and meditate on the couch in my living room, desperately trying to keep my racing thoughts at bay. I prepped lunches and laid out my outfits for the week and read Gretchen Rubin books in the bathtub.
Unfortunately, nobody’s going to give you an A in recovery (trust me, or I would have found and begged them for one). Imagine my surprise when, despite all my best efforts, I still fell into a depressive episode at the end of winter (which I dubbed March Sadness). It felt profoundly unfair. I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing, but I was still struggling. My error was in the belief that life works like a vending machine, wherein one deposits acts of self-care and instantly receives happiness and fulfillment in return. But the universe doesn’t owe me anything, which is terrifying as well as beautiful, in a sort of absurdist existentialist way.
March rolled over into April and things got a bit better, as they often do with time (though patience has never been my strong suit). I remember biking to work, looking into the canyon that our building overlooks. The hills were an explosion of yellow—wildflowers that had bloomed after the late winter rains. I remember smiling, just because. Not every moment of joy has to be earned. Sometimes the universe throws you a bone.
I sit on the sidewalk and evaluate my current situation. Aside from some skinned knees, my legs seem okay. Mercifully, nobody pulls their car over to ask if I’m okay. I allow myself a thirty-second pity party before wiping the gravel off my hands and picking myself up off the concrete. I finish my run with a bloody knee, hoping that I don’t traumatize any small children as I pass by my neighborhood elementary school. I’m running on adrenaline, and I don’t yet realize that I’ve sprained my wrist in the fall. Shit happens. I fall. I get back up. I’ll fall again. Or, in the immortal words of Chumbawumba, “I get knocked down, but I get up again.”
I imagine that, on a macro level, any of our lives might look like the work of Sisyphus, fated to roll that boulder up the hill, over and over. But this bird-eye perspective fails to capture the minutiae that make up a life—the smell of grass as the sun sucks the morning dew from its blades, a pebble that you absent-mindedly move around in your shoe. The coolness of a large rock, sitting in the shade, waiting for you to put your hands on it and start rolling.
About Aubrey:
Aubrey Zepeda is a scientist by day and runner by morning. When she's not setting up experiments in the lab or plodding down the road in her running shoes, you can find her either at the climbing gym or in bed with a book. She is currently living in San Diego with her partner and their dog, who is a very good boy.
Instagram: @aubreyz_writes