So, I skipped a day of jogging today.
It’ll be fine, they said
(The audience, that is, that posts in my head like a relentless online forum).
A break will be good, they said.
Mmmyeah…
I haven’t felt this awful since that time I quit painkillers and valium simultaneously and my skin started doing what ocean water does right before it turns into a tsunami intent on ingesting Japanese folk en masse like an aqueous Godzilla. Indeed, a behemoth malevolent water monster is exactly my current emoji situation. In fact, it took a good long while of sitting down to sort out my schizoid thoughts before I realized that I’m just being obstinate. Greedy. Spoiled. A year ago, I didn’t think I’d even run again – much less outside in fresh air. All I had was my elliptical.
Maybe that’s why I resent using it – or any machine- so much now.
It internally symbolizes that whole invalid, pain pill ridden, barely sentient, living corpse lifestyle that was mine for so very long. In a way, nature jogs are a way not only to divorce myself from the ick-factor of isolation and a bad past, but a literal way to run away from it altogether. And because my life before was so “by the numbers”, I never keep an M.O. with my jogs now either. It’s the only thing that’s sacred, so I keep it as spontaneous as sneezing and remain as furtive as Fight Club. There’s no judgment while running. No past. No future. No thought – save for what’s in front of my face. This brain escape is a place I can enter by leaving myself – for hours on end. I arrived home a few days ago walking like Hunter S. Thompson on an ether ketamine cocktail entering Circus Circus. But for the hour and forty-five minutes I’d just been jogging, I wouldn’t have known that was awaiting me. It’d been unmitigated bliss, my breath, and pulsating adrenalized power.
In these moments, I’m Superman – flying, untouchable, radiating on another frequency.
A diligent pusher and loyal repeat customer. All in one fluid moving human.
And ever returning for more.
“I AM the one who jogs…”
It’s the only reprieve when I’m too nervous for yoga to press a dent into welling anxiety.
And as an addictive personality, I’ve latched onto that feeling fast. That missing piece – the cardio keystone I’ll never have to fund or run out of again until my femur fractures and my fibula disintegrates to calcium, marrow, and dust at the roadway’s shoulder. And when it does, there I’ll remain. Like a loyal dog beside a dead master. Now that I can’t reach for a benzo to quell my spells of intrinsic sickness, a day away from my five dimensional, chem-free euphoria seems inconceivable. The fact that this is available to me, makes every other lesser option (like a treadmill) feel like I imagine methadone would to an intravenous smack addict. Or going from raw dog to condom sex for dudes. I’ll do the damned machines. But I refuse to be happy about this punishment, this downgrade, this emotional demotion.
No rest days for this bish.
“Rest day? You mean Wimp Interval? Bitch Break? Pansy Sabbatical?”
I suppose I should just try to use this time to reflect on how far I’ve come this past year. Take stock. Be grateful. And although all’a that sounds real nice, that probably won’t happen. Not with bitchmode in full effect like it is. But what I will remember is what this horrible dysphoria that everyone affectionately refers to as “rest day” feels like.
This pussy pass ain’t for me.
And I’ll remember that next time better than Heisenberg wants us to remember his name.
’cause breaking’s bad when you’re a jogging junkie.