I have this Russian phrase tattooed on my right forearm; it translates into “I lived”. It’s my only tattoo and a commitment to myself and anyone I hold in my arms that when I die there will be not a drop of life left. It’s also the title of a OneRepublic song. The same song I used for my suicide note to my son nearly a decade ago. This is why I run – why I’ve committed myself to a lifetime of unbounded fitness.
We all run for something.
I run for myself.
I run to be happy.
I run to be healthy.
I run to live life to its fullest.
I run to be a better father, a better husband a better businessman.
I run to gain wisdom and clarity. I use my worries and confusion as fuel my run, inhaling the insights and resolution.
I run for those moments when it all clicks; when my legs are whirling, my chest heaving, my focus collapsed into a few square feet of feet moving the entire earth forward underneath me so that I am not of this earth but galloping over it.
Yeah.
I run for all these reasons and many more that are hard to explain
but I’ll bet you understand because
I see you running too.
You don’t get diamonds without pressure.
In my mid 30’s I was crippled with PTSD from sexual assault as a kid. Many victims of assault repress these events, especially men. This repression is biology’s way of helping us survive traumatic and intense experiences. Like a fishing net left too long in the water, this repression begins to accumulate unwanted parts of life, even taking on its own ecosystem.
My visages and coping behaviors early in life became nightmares and addictions in adulthood. I remember the first time I was in a real therapy session, I realized that my “amped” mood and anxiety about social interactions were really adrenaline dumps. The same flight or fight, life or death responses we save for the most stressful moments of life? I had them almost every waking hour. This was my normal for my 1st 30 years. This was my pressure.
2015 was the boiling-over point. I decided to end my marriage of 12 years. My financial situation was abysmal. I was hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt trying to get my virtual care start-up to work and it was failing in spectacular fashion. And my PTSD raging, making it impossible for me to tell what was real and what was fantasy. I had failed. At marriage. In business. In life. I hated myself.
The choice for me was not if I was going to end my life, but when; when would the gravity of suicide finally be greater than the momentum of life? I was sick, I was angry, I was a failure. It was then than I drafted a note using the One Republic song “I Lived” to my 4-year-old son. The gravity of whiskey and sleeping pills on the counter growing strong each day.
One morning a few days after I drafted my suicide note, I woke up before dawn with a sobering clarity that I wanted to go for a run.
No destination, no specific mileage or pace. As I emerged from my car in skimpy running shorts, no shirt (Mill City running hat of course) – the bare essentials, the sky was a flurry of lightning and low, mottled grey clouds hurtling across the Twin Cities.
I ran around the chain of lakes, my heart and mind racing 10x faster than my legs. A few miles in, I paused at a bridge on Lake of the Isles and gazed across the lake and tumultuous sky.
My heart was broken, my body exhausted, my mind a tangle of thoughts and hallucinations, yet I heard, I felt, these words with utmost clarity:
“Do not stop running!”
I thought I knew how to work hard; I thought I had done hard things in life. Ha. Nope.
Hard was taking my next step with my decimated heart, muddled mind, and lost soul, broke, unmarried and slipping towards insolvency knowing that next step would be the hardest step I’ve ever taken; knowing next step will be even harder, the next step even harder and so on. Knowing there will be no awards, no posters and no accolades, only harder steps. And the only way the steps get easier is when my perception of hard is shattered and rebuilt; until I embrace the next step as the most glorious feat imaginable. Until my naked soul has skin-to-skin contact with gratitude.
To do those hard things, I came up with a simple mantra: love myself, love my son. If I could do that and keep my legs moving, deep down I knew I’d be OK. It meant learning to love myself, which I did through incredible, professional help (EMDR is amazing for PTSD). I didn’t have to learn how to love my son, but I embraced being dad in new ways; durable, important ways I didn’t have modeled for me. The simplicity of the mantra allowed me to let go, to focus and rebuild.
I cannot change my past, but I can change how I live today. I hope my story reflects the light of our amazing life. I hope it fills you with hope and confidence to take the hard steps. I hope you share my story and yours with us. I am immensely grateful that I took those hard steps; that I didn’t not stop running.
Now you know why I run – because each step proclaims:
I lived.