I recently posted a very personal story for my friend, Jennifer’s blog series titled “Why I Run”. Someone asked me to elaborate. My reply was much too long to put in a reply on my friend’s post, so I decided to link it back to my own blog. I guess this could be titled Why I Run, Part II, but since it elaborates on a very profound time in my life, I will just keep it related to the reply.
You can view the original piece on Jen Luitwieler’s website by clicking here.
Ellen,
I don’t want to define extramarital affairs for everyone; all I can say is that I certainly have no desire to become emotionally entangled with another human being to the suffocating degree that I did last year.
I began That Run already exhausted, actually.
For years before that run, I was partner in a marriage that was fueled by immature expectations and thousands of misconceptions. For months before that run, I was partner in an extramarital relationship that I’d poured every single good and hopeful part of me into. Even with the fact that I had run for years prior to that crisp winter run I mentioned in my piece for this topic, I was sort of a shell of a human being.
To understand what went through my mind on that run, you first have to understand a little bit about what led me to it. In September of last year, I met a man who, on every single fundamental and microscopic level, I related to. Being that connected to another human being rocked me to my core. All of my long-forgotten-and-mocked notions of romantic love seem suddenly very real and very plausible. This person made me feel so purely and simply and profoundly good about myself. So I spent more and more time with this him, until my world was dominated not by the responsibilities that had formerly defined my existence, not by my education (I dropped a class and failed a class in that time period), not by my relationships with my kids and certainly not by the rapidly-deteriorating relationship with my husband. As you can imagine, it was only a matter of time before my husband could no longer handle being the very last priority in the life of the woman he was married to, and we separated.
As I began to confront the realities of my life as a single mom, I realized that it would not be possible to continue keeping this other man at the forefront of my every thought process. I was no longer going to be enabled to live a materially comfortable married life that allowed me time to shirk responsibilities in favor of spending time with the very man who had no part of that other life. I had kids to raise, a house to care for, a job to show up for every day, an education to pursue. So we decided to “take a break”.
I began to realize that what I was going through was emotional withdrawal. Waking up in the morning and getting out of bed suddenly became a feat of feats, and I had absolutely zero ability to feel joy; my relationship with him had become my only happiness. And as it was, we broke the rules…and then it was just him breaking the rules. I equate those feelings to being a recovering crack addict and having my dealer show up on my doorstep dangling a bag of smack. In hindsight, I think I learned more about my true character and the true character of the person I was in this relationship with in that time of distance than I’d ever conceived of knowing before.
There came a point where I was so incredibly empty and lost and drained that I really had no other thing left to do BUT run. That run began, I think, as a gasp for breath. I knew that I had begun running to escape the anguish ensuing after my poor heart health and to prove that I could still be an active member of society even with health problems. I figured that I could run this time to prove to myself that even though I felt like I was suffocating, I could still get out of bed and do something — anything — besides feel sorry for myself.
In that half hour time period, I really connected with some kind of indomitable inner peace and strength. Empowerment, confidence, happiness? They were mine and I was free to feel those things. I had spent so long pursuing those things that I was incapable of realizing that they were always there to feel; I just had to allow myself the pleasure. I realized that no person — regardless of how much we have in common or how much we like each other’s personality — could ever validate me the way that I can validate myself. No ego boost — no matter how large — will ever last long enough to provide me with a lifetime of sustained satisfaction. I defined my entire being through the existence of the people in my life for so long that I relied on them to make me feel good enough…for myself? That run was just a run, but if it were not for the allowance of that time to just connect with myself, it would have been just an act of running. Instead I realized the ways in which I defined my relationships were also the ways in which I defined myself. Then it happened. I had the thought, “Hey, your math is not adding up.”
I knew by the time I was home that the only way I was going to be happy was to accept my weaknesses instead of constantly trying to deny myself access to them. In trying to live through feigned strength, I became a victim of my own self; I entered into a relationship with a person who was as insecure and unhappy and unwilling to confront himself as I was. I had somehow, in those months, poured every fiber of my goodness into a doomed relationship that ultimately acted as the biggest catalyst for self-evolution in my life to date.
I will also say right now that if it were not for the act of running, I probably would have repeated many more mistakes of epic proportions simply because once I came to terms with these facts, the guilt that I felt was as overwhelming and almost as suffocating as the resentment I’d wallowed in for 12 years before the events of 2010. The shame was not a very fun feeling, either. Every time I think of those events, I feel sadness — for my kids and my family, that I could be so selfish as to neglect their basic needs in order to fulfill my childish need for attention; for my husband that I ever allowed another person into our lives in such a destructive manner, that instead of putting my efforts into saving us, I wasted them for so long on something that only caused more pain to overcome. I feel sadness for myself that I threw so much of myself into two relationships that, on their own, would have never been able to provide me the happiness that I should have been able to provide myself — my marriage as it was formerly, and my affair.
I am still weak, and whenever I cannot run due to illness or injury, I find it difficult to fight negativity. I strongly believe, though, that if it weren’t for running, I wouldn’t have made it to the point where I was ever able to confront the fallacies in my character. This new validation that happiness is mine to have has brought about revolutions in my relationship with my husband, my kids, and basically everyone I come into contact with. It has changed me at my core; I am more content, more satisfied, I am truly happy because I realize that no other person on this planet can make me feel that way; I have to reach out and grasp for it all by myself. I don’t really know why, but running just happens to be the catalyst that provided me with that insight, so I figure I may as well keep doing it and see what other great things it leads me to.
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