
My son almost died when he was a baby. And I thought I was okay once we checked out of the hospital. It wasn’t until three months later, when some of the trauma from that experience lifted, that I realized I hadn’t been okay at all.
Denial. Not Just a River in Egypt
I went through that same pattern for about a year. The cloud of trauma would rise up a bit, and I would look back at the previous months and think ‘Why did I think I was okay then? Boy I’m glad I’m okay now,’ until I noticed the number of times I said that. At that point I started worrying that I wasn’t ever going to be okay again.
Panic drove me to therapy. I had small children to care for, a demanding job, and the fallout from the last recession to deal with. I didn’t have time for PTSD or whatever it was that was wrong with me. The plan was to go, talk to someone to take the edge off of things, and then carry on with my life.
That isn’t how therapy works. I know that, now. But at least I went. Up until that point my only real coping mechanisms were denial and knitting, and knitting can only get you so far.
You Can’t Heal if You Don’t Admit You’re Injured
The thing is, you can’t heal if you refuse to admit you’re injured. It’s hard to admit when I’m hurting. I am the super hero of my own life. But sometimes life punches you right in the jaw and you need to admit it hurts.
My company is going through a reorganization. A lot of good people are leaving, and it hurts.
Discomfort Isn’t An Emergency
Let’s talk about running. I promise it’s relevant. Running long distances hurts. Something inevitably chafes, my muscles scream, and sweat gets into my eyes.
Long distances also scrub away the things that don’t really matter–if I can go the distance, I gain a kind of clarity I can’t find any other way. But to get there, I spend the last few miles talking myself through the tired and the pain. I’m not talking about actual injury here. I’m talking about surface discomfort–blisters, fatigue, that sort of thing.
You know what? Discomfort isn’t an emergency. Strictly speaking, if I’m running at the edge of my capability, I’m not okay. But the shortest distance back to okay is to wade right through. Running is the least traumatic way I know of to learn to cope with pain.
Almost
There’s only one word in the sentence ‘my son almost died as a baby,’ that I am grateful for. That word is ‘almost.’ The experience gave me a set of coping skills I wish I could have learned by running instead. And that’s basically where I’m at right now with this reorganization. Coping. My colleagues will find great jobs. At some point this will stop hurting so much. I will put one foot after the other and I will keep going until I push on through.