Resilience

I’ve been running a lot more lately. Six times a week and sometimes for as long as I can, stretching my endurance until it buckles under the challenge. (I’ve discovered also on my most anxious days that I’m a fucking speed demon and have, although only once, had a sub seven-minute mile.) Most days, though, it’s three miles after I’ve drank my coffee and most days, it feels the same way.

Despite my consistency and my improving times, I still resent running. I’m not good at it. At all. It provides nothing in the way of endorphins. My gait is still awkward and ungainly, and I run either with little t-rex arms flapping at my side or both my hands doing a thumbs up. Why? I don’t fucking know. I just do, okay?

And while running is awkward and unpleasant, I do it regardless, anyway, with a regularity that makes me feel like my subconscious uses it to keep time, signaling the shift from somnolence to morning productivity. Or maybe, to remind myself that we survive what doesn’t kill us.

More than anything else, I am a creature of endurance. If I have any superpowers, it is sheer stubborn will. I might not enjoy the actual work of say, running every morning like the hounds of hell are coming after me, but I do find an odd pleasure in negotiating with my lizard brain, in tricking it to do what I want with pointless deals and nonsensical promises. Count slowly to ten and then we can check how many calories burned. We know it takes thirty seconds at this speed to burn five calories. Ergo, if we burn twenty-five calories, we’ve run two and a half minutes. Once we’ve hit three minutes, we can check the clock to see if this is right. This sense of control is everything on the bad days, on the days when the news feels like a hand around my throat; it feels like a metaphor, a reminder that sometimes, it’s all about putting one foot in front of another, about breaking down the impossible into thirty seconds chunks.

Focus.

Sometimes, it’s about fixing what’s immediately in front of you. Sometimes, it’s about keeping your immediate community afloat, about being there for a friend who is more overwhelmed than you. Sometimes, it’s about pushing through that extra rep, or staying afloat on the pole for another ten seconds even though every muscle is singing for you to give up, give up, give up. It doesn’t feel like enough, not when everything is on fire. But sometimes, that’s all we can do: focus on one step so we can take another.

Media I’ve Been Enjoying

• If you’re not on the Severance train, you should be. This is probably one of the best things I’ve ever watched.

• Netflix released the second season of Cells at Work and I highly recommend the anime as a whole. It is medically accurate while also being a hilarious slice-of-life anime about antropomorphized cells going about their daily lives. Very funny, oddly affirming.

• Zombies, Run! is basically Walking Dead without the gratuitous bits where you’re a speedy little runner trying to help out Abel township. It’s surprisingly compelling and really effective for getting you to run like hell.

• The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling has some gloriously written cannibalism, beautifully unsettling saint-things, toxic lesbians, and is just very good at embodying the whole castle under siege thing. Super recommend.

I’ve been on Zoloft for about three weeks now, and it’s made a shocking amount of difference. Before taking it, it felt like there was a big red button in my skull and my anxiety was sitting on it all the time. As a result, my brain was a constant cacophony of blaring sirens and someone running around screaming, “THE SKY IS FALLING.” These days, it feels more like someone’d carefully put a panel of reinforced glass over the button and labeled it, ‘only in case of actual emergencies.’ It’s nice. It’s really nice. Just the other day, I had a hypochondria episode where I was able to look at the thought, go, ‘no, this seems very unlikely,’ and put down the worry and go about my day. Antidepressants are a tricky topic for a lot of people but if you needed a sign you should maybe talk to someone about whether they work for you, consider this one.

I leave you with this photo of my two idiots. (For context, Big Orange violently hates Tortie but in recent months, has maybe considered only actively disliking her. The other night, she actually wandered over to where the Tortie was sitting and quietly sat down beside her, even going as far as to lightly groom her heed. Tortie and her sat in peace for a minute, but then Tortie laid down and tried to snuggle and Big Orange went fuck this and leapt off.)

P.S: I have a new book coming out this year and it’s really special to me for a variety of reasons. Um, maybe consider pre-ordering?