Shit-Part II

SHIT Part II

Welcome to SHIT Part II.  I think Part II is going to be harder to write than Part I because here is where we are going to really get into some shit.  If you recall, we left off in SHIT Part I with me reluctantly agreeing to participate in a six-month program called Mountains to Marathons (M2M) after speaking with Jamin, one of the coaches while in Cape Cod on vacation.  Looking back at pictures of myself in Cape Cod, I can tell I wasn’t feeling well.  It’s funny to me how a picture can capture nuances like that.  Maybe the difference isn’t noticeable to anyone but me but the picture I have attached to this blog is one of the photos where I can tell something was off internally.  I feel like the emptiness in my eyes is palpable. 

Anyway, after faking it through the last few days of vacation in Cape Cod, I returned to Iowa  feeling even shittier because I had failed at vacationing.  What kind of individual could not enjoy themselves on the Cape?  I felt like a total zero.  Being at home, however, was somewhat worse than being at the Cape.  At the Cape, at least I had distractions-it’s hard not to when you have 13 people living in the same house for a week.  But back in Iowa, it was just the kids and me.  I still woke up a lot of mornings and thought, “Fuck me, I have to do this shit all over again.”  I also was experiencing massive buyer’s remorse about the M2M program.  I felt guilty for spending money on myself and essentially signing up to take a vacation to the Bahamas without my kids.  I really fucking hate to admit this because it is hard to do, but I also felt immense sadness because I felt like I had no one authentic to take to the Bahamas with me. I don’t know why but admitting loneliness is hard for me to say out loud.  Admitting the presence of this emotion causes some shame and guilt over who I am and the choices I have made that got me to the point of being lonely.  I pictured everyone else in the program showing up with significant others, having romantic dinners in the Bahamas, and taking walks along the beach.  Meanwhile, I pictured myself alone, ending up at some oceanside bar with a bunch of fucking randos.  I really didn’t feel up to being in this imaginary position.  However, the M2M program was starting in 3 days so I didn’t have much time to reconsider my decision.  

After my first call with Jamin and Jen, I was immediately overwhelmed with everything that was going on.  There was homework, weekly individual sessions with Jamin and Jen, team sessions with the other participants, nutrition and running coaching sessions, all on top of training to run a marathon which is quite time consuming in and of itself.  I began to wish I had paid more attention to what Jamin had said about the program.  I was still hyper-focused on just the marathon training piece and hadn’t completely bought into the leadership bit just yet.  Quite frankly, the other stuff sounded like a lot of work, and I didn’t want to make time for it.  I remember thinking to myself, “Well, I am just going to have to half ass this shit.”  I would come to find out, however, that this was not the kind of program one could half ass. So here is where I have to start to summarizing things because otherwise this blog will last until SHIT Part XV.  So my reality when I started the program is a bit embarrassing. I was working too much, eating like trash, staying up too late, hanging out with people who did not have my best interest in mind, and not working out.  I mean, as I write that it is no wonder I felt like shit, but I had started doing all of these things to try to feel better.  It is an oddity of the human experience that we seek out quick relief when we are feeling bad through, for example, alcohol or food or nicotine, and yet in the long term, these vices only contribute to and exacerbate the sea of problems one might be swimming in. I had fallen prey to this vicious cycle without really realizing it.  Jamin, being all Jamin-esque proclaimed that the M2M program would help me stop doing these things.  “Well,” I remember thinking.  “That was fucking bold.”  What Jamin did not know was that I wasn’t interested in completely revamping my lifestyle at the time.  I literally just wanted to run a fucking marathon.    

The other reality I had to admit in some of my very early sessions was that I had essentially numbed myself to most emotions.  The reason I was so closed off was that I did not want to remember or feel certain things.  I was afraid that once I started feeling difficult emotions, they would never cease.  So instead of feeling them, I put them away in a trunk and just kept keeping on keeping on.  Jill got hurt?  Fuck it, put it in the trunk and move on like it didn’t matter.  Something bad happened to Jill?  Also went straight into the trunk.  I had little capacity for joy or happiness because all my energy was focused on keeping the trunk shut.  I am not quite sure how to explain what happened next.  But basically, Jamin and Jen helped me look inside that trunk.  Oh my, it was nasty business.  Pain, betrayal, fear, shame, guilt, hurt, sadness, and well, just overall wretchedness engulfed and overwhelmed me.  It was not what I would call a fun time.  How I longed to just be numb again instead all this other bullshit.  All I wanted to do was a run marathon and now all this other shit was going on.  There were times I was mad I signed up for the program.  There were times I wanted to quit.  Jamin and Jen told me to just keep showing up and trusting in the process.  So what did this self-proclaimed asshole do?  I cried-well, wept really, for the first time in a long time. Doesn’t sound so bad, right?  I mean everyone cries sometimes, and I was overdue.  The problem was that I just kept crying, sobbing really.  I woke up crying, I went to bed crying.  I would be with my kids, start bawling and have to explain that mom was just sad right now.  I was grieving shit from my childhood, shit from being mistreated in the military, shit from my deployment, shit from my marriage, shit from my divorce, and shit from other personal relationships where I had been hurt. It wasn’t like I was having a pity party; I can’t really explain it.  I mean I didn’t feel bad for myself or anything like that, I was just, well, really fucking hurt and really fucking sad.  And so I just kept crying.  

At some point, I became scared that I would be stuck in this chasm of grief permanently.  Jamin and Jen assured me there was a bottom but I wasn’t so sure.  It seemed to be a never-ending well of sadness.  I don’t think everyone who completes the program cries as much as I did- so I don’t want anyone to be freaked out by that- but this is how mine went because (1) I’m a sensitive fuck, believe it or not and (2) the level of, well Jamin and Jen call it trauma, but I don’t like to think of it like that so I’ll just say shit, I had been through.  And then, after a bit, I woke up one day and I didn’t feel like crying.  In fact, I felt pretty good and a bit at peace.  The next day, I was back to crying.  It was like that for a bit, up and down, but eventually I began to string together more and more good days.  I remember a friend I had not heard from in a while texted me and asked how I was doing and I replied that I was so happy because it had been over a week since I cried.  Not having the full story, my friend was a little appalled that I was considering that a victory, but it truly was.  Eventually I began to cry less and less.  The well was actually drying up.  Now when I thought about certain events, I felt at peace.  I didn’t like that they happened, but I could accept that they had.  One morning, I was with my daughter and I actually found myself having fun with her.  I was not faking it, forcing it, doing it because I had to in order to be a good mom, or going through the motions as I had been in the past.  I was really and truly enjoying myself and we both were genuinely giggling.  I think I will always remember this moment because I was fully present and didn’t have any anxiety distracting me.  That’s when I knew I had turned a corner.  

What was the difference from counseling you wonder? I don’t want anyone to take this as in I don’t think counseling is appropriate and beneficial.  I absolutely believe it is imperative and helpful.  It is good to talk about one’s problems and get a different perspective or viewpoint.  We often have myopia when it comes to ourselves and counseling can help expose that.  However, for me, I felt like counseling never really gave me closure.  This was probably mostly my fault, as I think I just wasn’t completely ready or in the right place.  With counseling, I would talk about my issues but then when the hour was up, I would carefully pack up my emotions and put them back in my trunk.  I never learned how to get my issues and emotions out of the trunk for good.  This is where the M2M program was different, for me at least.  There is a lot more to the program than this but in general, I had to write all of the details down about the disturbing or painful event or situation.  Writing things is easier for me than saying them.  I can pound away on the keyboard and just put my thoughts down, raw and uncensored.  In contrast, with counseling, most of the time, because it was face to face, I dressed things up a bit.  For example, I would say I was “angry” or “frustrated” about something when what I really wanted to say was I so fucking pissed I wanted to throw a coffee cup against the wall.  True story, I told that to a counselor once and she looked shocked and then backed her chair up like she was afraid of me.  So, I learned to censor myself a bit or leave certain things out when talking face to face with a counselor. But writing something I thought only I would ever see allowed me to really let loose.  The F-bomb was littered throughout these gems – they were not literary works of genius.  I hope no one ever finds these rants, which reminds me I need to delete them off my computer, but I digress.   So when I was all done writing, I thought, “Great, I got it all out, mission accomplished.”  Wrong.  I then had to read it out loud to Jamin and Jen.  Reading it out loud was the part I hated the mostbecause most of the time, while reading it, guess what?  Yep, I cried.  Plus, I hadn’t told anyone about some of these things or how I truly felt about certain situations and that was intimidating.  I thought it would be too much for Jamin and Jen to handle but they never once made me feel anything but acceptance.  Then, sometimes, Jamin or Jen would then read it back to me.  Oh, to hear sweet Jen say the F-word a million times was truly something.  But, uncomfortable as it might have been, reading it and hearing it helped somehow.  The last part was I had to take action to clear the situation or close it out.  And this-this was the place counseling never got me to.  A place where I felt some closure or some peace.  A place where I didn’t just put everything back in the trunk.  

Once I had gone through this process, I was able to see I wasn’t just some actor stuck in a shit play being directed by someone else.  I realized I was empowered to be a leader in my own life and relationships.  I could leave the practice of law (a career I have never really enjoyed).  I could own a restaurant if I wanted to.  I could move out of Iowa if I wanted to.  I finally understood what Jamin and Jen were talking about when they used the term “leadership.”  It wasn’t the hokey Army leadership bullshit.  It was about being the leader of your own life.  I know I probably lost some of you here because it does sound a little hippy dippy.  But, here is the remarkable thing that happened after six months.  I was eating better.  I was sleeping more.  I no longer had to take a sleeping pill to fall asleep.  I was doing the marathon training.  I was working less.  I had stopped hanging around the wrong kind of people.  I was taking a new class.  I had more energy.  I was a better mom.  The funny thing is that I didn’t have to consciously try to achieve these results.  It wasn’t like I ever said “I am going to try to not take my sleeping pill.”  It just organically happened.  Jamin and Jen always told me if I stuck with the program for six-months I would experience a transformation.  I really thought these two were just trying to market some bullshit pipe dream and honestly, until the final days of the program, I myself did not fully realize what had happened.  But once I started thinking about how my life had changed, in my reluctant, non-excited, excited Jill sort of way, I kind of began to accept a transformation had occurred although I still don’t like that word.  I’d rather just say I changed some shit up.  Don’t get me wrong, things are by no means perfect.  I’m 42 and divorced with two young kids.  I don’t love my job.  My close friends live out of town.  I’m still afraid of getting hurt which makes it hard for me to get to know people. This is not a life anyone dreams of or seeks out.  But I’d like to think I’m at least getting my shit together, not using the trunk as much and creating a better future for the second half of my life.             

So you may have noticed I have not mentioned the marathon much or the Bahamas and you might be wondering what happened with that.  Did I spend every night on the beach alone?  Did I end up with the randos at the bar?  I guess this means there will be a SHIT Part III.  And then I promise to be done with this series of shit.