I’m dead serious about running that half marathon I signed up for at 12:16 AM this morning. I dragged my butt out of the house this afternoon and ran for a half an hour… I may have had to walk those last 8 minutes up a super steep incline.
It’s not much, but I had to start somewhere. I got my 95th fastest time! WOO!
In my defense, those hills were really, really steep.
This is about so much more than just running a half marathon. I’m honestly not a big new-years-resolution person, because I’m bad at keeping the resolutions I make. I’ve only successfully kept a resolution twice. Okay, three times. Four. I just remembered that other one. Anyway, point is, I’m not great at it. I wasn’t even going to do one this year, because I’d decided it was dumb.
But then I realized—I just had to. Because I have to get unstuck.
And that’s what this is about. This is about living one of my favorite Cure songs, and Doing the Unstuck.
This last year was really painful and, honestly, scary for me. I know something needs to change.
So the other day, I sat down with a pen and a pretty journal and did some serious soul digging. We don’t just get stuck for no good reason. I had to take inventory of this person I want to be—the person I believe I really am—and mentally acknowledge all the comfortable barriers I’ve put up around myself. It’s in those comfortable—but soul-draining—barriers in which we find ourselves stuck. We get too complacent. We hit one of those barriers, sigh, and decide that we can go no further.
And it’s in pushing ourselves out of those comfortable, miserable barriers that we become unstuck.
And so, with each trait I observed in my soul digging, I gave myself a different challenge. One that would crack at a barrier a little at a time.
And this half-marathon is connected to all the things I’ve challenged myself to do.
I don’t believe in giving up. I don’t believe in complaining and then not doing anything to fix things. Now, when the bad memories claw their way to the surface of my mind and grip it with cold, cruel hands, I definitely feel differently. But that’s all the more reason why I need to do this. Healing doesn’t happen without work.
Where Rose Writes Very True Stories 