Please Don't Say You're Sorry

Perfection isn’t always attainable.  I know that.  I tell myself that daily.  I 100%, without a doubt KNOW there are going to be times that I land well short of the mark.  Case in point – all the torn ligaments in my knee.  Yet, I still have the hardest time dealing with my failures.  I should be better, I should know better, I am better than being someone who falls.  

Just turned 40 and flipping fine!

But I’m not. 

When this injury happened, I immediately called my mother.  The next day after taking me to the doctor, she placed a deposit on a billboard announcing my fate.  Ok, she didn’t – that was the sarcasm talking – but I’m fairly confident that she sent a mass-text message to everyone in my family to tell them what happened.  At 10:30 in the morning on Saturday, I was home from the doctor and only Chris and my mom knew what happened.  At 1p the hubs and I were sitting in the finance department of the local Toyota dealership, buying a new car (that was a months-long process and I wasn't going to let a few little pesky fraying ligaments keep us from getting this car) and fielding texts from my sister.

My sister didn’t even ask: “Hey, are you ok;” or “How are you feeling;” or “Mom just told me what happened.”  Nope.  Her first text to me was:

I need to see a picture of you knee

Followed up a minute later with:

How are you?  I’ll call you later tonight or tomorrow.

                I responded to her text with a pic of my knee while I was in between signing documents on the dotted line for our new car.  I then texted her and said: 

I’m alive.  I feel stupid, and I am so mad at myself.

                I’m by no means complaining about my sister.  Had I actually been the one to tell her what happened, I would’ve been disappointed if her first inclination wasn’t to ask for a pic of my knee.  No, her text messages were exactly what I would’ve wanted them to be had I told her myself.  That being said, it’s my follow-up text that is most telling of why I wasn’t the actual person to tell her (or many other people for that matter as well).  There’s a lot of anger, embarrassment, and resentment directed ay myself over falling.

                Couple those feelings with people’s sympathy, and it should be easy for anyone who knows me to understand why I haven’t told many people – seriously, my mom told way more! 

There’s a still many people who have no idea something is wrong with me.  Despite having this blog and having an Instagram to detail this journey, I feel the need to keep this diagnosis private.  I have no problem talking about it face-to-face with someone (I’ve done so with many people I work with).  Face-to-face, I can control the dialogue and steer any poor "you vibes" into something that I find way more constructive.  When I talk to someone in real life, they can see I'm actually in good spirits, and that I'm just really anxious to put this all behind.  Still, there’s a part of me that wants to fiercely guard my diagnosis and keep it from the fake sympathy social media mob. 

In all honesty, actual sympathy is like a knife in my gut.  Merriam-Webster lists one of the meanings of this word to be: the feeling that you care about and are sorry about someone else’s trouble, grief, misfortunate, etc.

Not being upside down is absolutely killing me!

 

It’s the sorry part that I think I really have an issue with and is what I can’t come to terms with – namely because I don’t feel sorry for myself.  Is it an unfortunate mistake?  Of course.  Could it have been avoided?  Yes.  Yes, on a lot of fronts.  It was a mistake and from where I sit, most of my mistakes could’ve been avoided.  For instances, I could’ve just not attempted it; I could’ve stopped at a half and called it a day; I could’ve just LANDED IT.  I could’ve realized Mercury was in retrograde and decided to save the twisting for the next week.  Long story short, I’m angry at myself for doing something poorly and hurting myself.

                “Sorry” isn’t going get me on my feet any faster.  Sympathy and feeling sorry for me are emotions that are going to chain me down and keep me thinking about my life before and how I was able to walk normally and run and do a whole host of other things that most people never even begin to try.  None of that is useful.

I haven’t felt sorry for myself one single time from this injury.  Other than those first dawning moments when the magnitude of what happened really sunk in and it became apparent that a few good night’s sleep wasn’t going to cure all, I have been calm, self-deprecating, and ready to get this all done so I can heal.  If I don’t feel sorry for myself, you shouldn’t either.

That’s not to say that I don’t feel though.  Like I said earlier, I'm angry.  It’s hard not to hate my bad decision when I see someone out running, when I think of all work that lays ahead for me, and when I hear someone say: Oh, I’m so sorry.

I just want to run with my sweet Maris again!

 

Seriously, every time I hear that phrase, “I’m so sorry,” it grates away a little bit more at my nerves which have been wearing thin for more than a couple of decades now.  And I must stop myself from biting that person’s head off by saying, “You’re sorry?  That’s great, just great.  How in the actual fuck is you being sorry supposed to help me?  Huh?  I’m waiting.  How?!:

Oh, yeah, I'm definitely angry!  Anger kind of gets a bad rap.  Of course, it can be very dangerous, but it can also be useful.  When I’m angry at myself, I can become a better, more determined version of myself.  There’s a really weird part of me that likes finding my back against the wall and having to fight my way out.  I feel like finishing my fourth marathon is going to be like some “Jean-Claude Van Damme Kickboxer BUT in a cage” kind of fight.  Or maybe it’ll be a “John McClane, shoeless, fighting off bank robbers with one arm tied behind his back to save Nakatomi Towers, hostages, and his wife” kind of fight.  Honestly, if I don’t cry when I finish this fourth marathon, I’m going to be so disappointed in myself.

I don’t want to say marathon running is easy – it’s not – but finishing my third marathon and not setting a personal record really upset me.  I felt like with my training and with two other experiences under my belt, I could definitely PR, but that wasn’t case at all.  Today though, I just want to cross that finish line again. 

I don’t want to say I’m tired of running, but I have felt somewhat stagnant and sedimentary with running.  I ran a lot in 2020 while I was working from home, but this past year, it’s been so much harder to get my feet under me.  I wish this injury didn’t happen, but it’s making me appreciate even my worst races and training runs: when my feet felt like lead; when I went out way too fast; when I was still figuring out how to properly hydrate and nourish my body on long runs…I would give anything just to be able to run again – to feel free from my thoughts and opinions with my sights on the road ahead of me and trying to keep Maris on track and not running after squirrels.

Finishing my second marathon

 I will get back there in time – that’s more than just a goal, it’s a promise.