This weekend is the hubby’s birthday and then on the 24th is the most important day of my life: Ukraine’s Independence Day. (And it might be our wedding anniversary, too, but priorities…)
(I’m trying not think too hard about what Putin may do to ‘celebrate’, but it’s not far from my thoughts.)
To celebrate, we went to the Everglades National Park - Shark Valley. All he’s wanted to do since we moved here is see an alligator in the wild and this place practically guarantees sightings. Of course, it’s “wet” season, which means the gators like to hide out in the water. During the dry season, they’re more likely to be out on the ground. Amazingly enough, there are no boundaries anywhere. People are expected to respect the wildlife, and in turn, the wildlife ignores them. According to our guide, there’s only been one serious event, it was an accident, and the kid survived. (The moral of the story is don’t fall off your bike onto an alligator.)
It’s a 15 mile loop, and in August, it’s a stupid idea to walk it. I wanted to, but we decided to take the tram out and back. (I know how to hydrate - not diedrate - and when you’re training for a marathon in South Florida, 15 miles is nothing! Unfortunately, the husband disagreed with me, so we’ll go back when it’s cooler. Maybe then he won’t care that it’s 15 miles.)
Our tour guide was excellent and the driver deserves a reward for not killing anyone. Every time the driver saw something of note, she’d slam on the brakes and make sure we saw it. She missed a turtle, but caught two alligators. Since that was the only objective, we left poor, but happy. (I can’t believe how expensive it was: $30 / car or $15 / person to get into the park, and another $30-ish / person to take the tram tour. But… alligators!)
In other news, life begins again. I’m feeling the best I’ve felt in a while (well, since I got fired in 2018) and it’s starting to show. I’ve pretty much decided to jump into the things that matter with both feet and dedicate myself to getting stronger. Whether it’s becoming fluent in Ukrainian or training for a marathon, it’s all or nothing. I’m finally rediscovering… me. I lost who I was for such a long time.
I ended up dumping my Ukrainian teacher and trying another one. I’m on my third. She seems to understand what I want out of this and is actually using a pretty obscure textbook that I already own. (It’s only offered by one program and it’s the textbook for their classes. Their program was OK, but pricey. The textbook however is amazing.)
I feel like I’m making a little progress with remembering vocab. I’m back on the Duolingo bandwagon because it’s a quick refresher every day and that helps, too. I’m also revisiting the Ukrainian Lessons podcast. I’m jumping in with both feet and it feels good.
Also part of my all or nothing mindset is running.
Yeah. Running.
I hired a running coach.
Read that again.
I. Hired. A. Running. Coach.
It’s like I want to become a serious runner or something…
I’m ridiculously fixated on my speed. Which, I suppose is understandable considering I didn’t finish two half marathons within the time limit. It was pure luck I didn’t get swept during Wine and Dine, and while I finished right behind the balloon ladies during Marathon Weekend (and knocked 13 minutes off my W&D time), I’m not happy with it. I want to finish these races with time to spare, to not be stressed out by an ill-timed bathroom break, to not hurt myself by trying to keep an unobtainable pace.
So. Yeah. I hired a running coach and every Saturday, we meet at the track and he tries to kill me. (Have I ever fully described South Florida in August? It fucking sucks.) I do speed drills. A lot of drills.
I’m getting faster and it’s hurting me less to run at those speeds. I’m still planning on doing intervals during the races, but I’m not sure what that’s going to look like. He thinks I can do one minute running, when I was aiming for thirty seconds.
The most exciting thing is that my progress is measurable. I’m consistently doing 11 minute miles (in about 40 seconds of running) during our track runs. When paired with my now-plateaued 16:30 walking speed, I’m in pretty good shape.
I had a rough goal of being able to finish in 7 hours with the Galloway 30/30 pacers, but he thinks I can finish in 6 without any problems. It’s not a Boston Qualifier by any means, but it’s more than I thought possible.
I don’t know…
I’m feeling pretty damn good about myself and the way my life is heading and I haven’t been able to say that in a long time.
hold on to your sombreros, amigos… here we go again
I’m STILL cleaning out that damn bedroom because it is so hard to go through all that stuff.
And yes, I know that green folder holds love letters from MJR, blue from JH, and red from ML but I’m still going to read all of them. Actually, that’s a lie. I threw ML’s out without even opening the folder. He’s not The One Try 1, or The One Try 2. Yeah… JH became one of my closest friends after we broke up and I kind of wish that DS had written letters to compare them with. (And that, my friend, is a long story with lots of the weirdness that has come to be the norm in my life. All that to say, I’m friends with both of them still and those friendships are very different.)
MJR’s though. Those hurt to read… not like I wasn’t expecting that. Our relationship was… difficult. He was fucked in the head. I’m fucked in the head. He cheated on his girlfriend at the time with me. Then, he cheated on me with her. Yeah, yeah, ‘once a cheater, always a cheater.’ We haven’t spoken since then, but he used to check out my LinkedIn profile so much that I cancelled my account. I don’t know if LinkedIn stalking is a thing, but it certainly bothered me. And I just found him on Facebook. Because, of course, I had to look for him just now. He’s changed a lot (I barely recognised him with the beard, but his eyes! His eyes gave him away… they took my breath away back then and they still do. And THAT was unexpected, although I should know better.) He’s married to a woman whose name is oddly similar to the one of the woman he cheated on me with. Honestly, I hope it is her. Looking back, I was just a distraction from a relationship that wasn’t ready to click. It was so clear in retrospect - the way he’d bring her up and compare her to me even though I was supposedly the better choice. I still read every single letter and cried over every page.
I threw out a box of letters people had written me. People that I don’t remember even writing to, referencing things I’ve forgotten. I didn’t even read letters from my supposed best friend at the time. Wasn’t worth it. They can I say all they want about me, but they were just as bad. I don’t care what you think as long as it’s about me. The best of us can find happiness in misery.
But that stretch of memory lane, while “fun” to walk down, is not what spurred this entry.
I keep finding photos in the oddest places. In a box filled with bills to shred. In a box filled with letters from people - where the photos have abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with the letter writers. It’s like I’d just randomly shove shit in a box. Which I probably did, but whatever.
I found this amazing photo of my cousin and her father. He died several years ago and well… let’s just say that I wish had a photo like that of myself with my dad. I took a picture of it and sent it to her with the offer that I would mail her the original. Crickets. So I threw it out. Technically, if you want to split hairs, they’re NOT my family any more and therefore, fall under rule #2: thou shall not keep photos of people who aren’t family. I stick to the labels because it’s easy and I’m lazy, but honestly, they’ve been reduced to people I share a bloodline with. And that’s fine.
What’s not fine is that my aunt blocked me on Facebook. I mean, I can see her name on M’s posts but I’m blocked when I click on it. I see posts with multiple comments where it looks like people are having a one-sided conversation.
I’ve known she blocked me for years but seeing that photo of M and J hit me like a fucking boulder. Everything my aunt took from me just hit me all at once… I’m fucking crying again. It hurts. That’s a wound that will never heal and I have tried. Therapy. Journaling. Blogging. More therapy. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to let it heal. Subconsciously, of course. Consciously, I want that bitch out of my head.
What the fuck is it with that generation on that side of my family tree?!?!?!
It was so easy to get rid of my father’s side. I barely ever think of them, although I just did a quick google search. I couldn’t find anything but names and cell phone numbers and street addresses. (Privacy, much?) Oddly enough, no Facebook accounts to be found. Then again, my dad’s side has pretty generic names.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Context: I was never close to them growing up. Even though I had two cousins on that side. We were close enough in age that it should have been the three of us against the world. They could have been like my brothers… my dad wanted that for us so desperately. He adored them and would do anything for them.
Ike wanted to see me, so I invited him to Ohio. And it was so fucking weird. I can’t remember if my father was alive or dead at that point… but either way, he was concerned about me and wanted to see me. He’s blood and I felt like I had an obligation to make him feel better about things by being there for him.
Yeah. Obligation. Not love. Not even like.
Blood calls to blood, right?
At some point after my father’s death, I wrote a blog entry about… everything. Every thing negative about my father. Every thing I loved about him.
Chris called. Said they’d read it, and what the fuck was I thinking, airing my dirty laundry to the world.
(Oh, sweetheart, if you could only see me now.)
That was the last time I spoke to anyone on the Gee side of the family tree.
If I had known it was that easy, I would have done it years earlier.
It’s the very last RTI racery event and I have bitten off more than I can chew… but I always do.
I took yesterday and Monday off - I needed some time to myself and I’m not that busy at work. Plus, it’s the first four days of The Final Battle and I figured that I would cap the first four days.
I had the bright Idea that I would run a mile for every day that Russian has been in Ukraine and donate $1 for each mile. (117 by the end of the event.) I had it planned out perfectly: Four caps would put me at 60 days. I could then cap the final weekend as well, which would push me to 90 before I ran a single mile on a workday.
Well.
I capped yesterday and today… I have not felt like a functional human at all.
I bite my nails. I always have. All the way down to the quick and sometimes a little extra. When I’m super stressed, I always manage to rip the entire nail off one (if not both) of my pinkies.
I saw a hypnotist. I’ve talked about it in therapy. I’ve worn false ones.
And I even bought this shit that was practically guaranteed to keep my fingers out of my mouth. (Oh. My. God. It was absolutely disgusting… But. It didn’t work.)
Several years ago, I had a great epiphany: I self-harm.
Still haven’t figured out how to get people to understand why I consider it self-harm, but the end result is the same.
Still haven’t figured out how to stop it either.
(Seriously! I saw a fucking hypnotist, I was so desperate to stop doing it. Apparently, I’m so fucked up that they couldn’t figure out a way to help.)
So anyhoo…
In 47 years on this earth, I have never seriously hurt myself. (The pain of a missing fingernail dissipates rather quickly when you’re used to it.)
Well, Thursday night I wound up in Urgent Care.
Managed to rip off my thumbnail and get an infection.
My thumb was swollen to twice it’s normal size and there was a little spot that had turned green.
It was the first time I’d ever been afraid of what I was capable of.
I suppose, in it’s own way, it’s not that much different from a blade slipping and cutting a vein or something.
Of course… in the car Friday morning on the way to the grocery store, I managed to chew off the remaining nails on that hand.
(All that to say I didn’t get in a cap today because I had a bad reaction to the antibiotic they prescribed me.)
This has been on repeat today… I’m not sure why, but it fits my mood perfectly.
I watch too many horror movies and my husband is The Chicken is Boba Fett. There. That’s a thing you know now about my private life.
I’m done.
Just when I thought I couldn’t be any less motivated to run…
RTI just settled their lawsuit with Warner Brothers, which loosely translates to WB just killed a group that is filled with people who love their intellectual property so much that they band together under the name and use their combined energy to do #somuchgood.
Yeah.
The Potterhead Running Club is closing up shop.
And because the PHRC basically funds all the other RTI clubs, Whovian and Fandom are closing down as well. They hope to keep the FRC Fan Domain group active, but no more medals. No more Racery events. Some of the PHRC groups (like Book Club, Transfiguration, etc.) are spinning off and will continue to operate under different names with volunteers to keep them alive.
But it won’t be the same.
The Tower has always felt like home to me… but it’s lost its magic. Literally.
There’s no other way to put it.
I’m not OK with this.
Seriously.
I’ve been crying since the news broke.
I’ve needed the consistency and the friendship and the sense of family the clubs were filled with.
And now it’s going away.
And I don’t know what to do with myself.
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I joke all the time that I’m not all that great at the social part of social media.
But let’s call it what it is: I collect people and then I barely interact with them. That’s why I have like 75 or 80 Facebook friends and most of my newsfeed is either (Ukrainian) bands or RTI groups. Anything more is overwhelming.
Shit, I haven’t spoken to my best friend, my little brother from another mother for two years now.
I’m just not good at it.
I keep coming back to the therapist that asked me why I don’t let people get close. Why I don’t let them help me through the Dark Days and The Ick.
I hate me during those times. I definitely don’t want to subject people I care about to that… which is why I am SO FUCKING HAPPY that my husband has been able to tolerate it.
We’ve been together since 1998 and got married in 2002. He’s a fucking saint.
A. FUCKING. SAINT.
- - - - - - - - - -
We’re doing a Stand with, or Support, Ukraine 5k locally tomorrow (whatever, I can’t remember the name). Proceeds are going to the Ukrainian Red Cross. I know they’re having problems selling the race, so who knows how much is actually going to Ukraine, but it’s still… something.
My tryzub sticker is on my car. We went shopping for shelving today and managed to fit it in the car. (I HAVE A TRUNK AGAIN! I might have started jumping up and down in the parking lot screaming my joy… have I mentioned my husband is a saint? Yup.) My Deathly Hallows is also on my car.
The only thing I’m missing are my race stickers. I can’t decide if I want to put them on now and add the marathon after, or do all four after and see if I can find a Dopey sticker.
When we moved to South Florida, I traded in my Forester because it didn’t perform well on the Florida roads. If the AC was on, the car struggled to go over 60. Average speed on the Sawgrass, the road I travel the most? 80+.
I traded it for a Mini Cooper. At first, I was excited because it was something new, and it was so fucking quick and fun to drive. But. As the years went on, the joy I found in the car started to wane.
It’s over engineered. (Thanks, BMW!)
It’s expensive to maintain. (Thanks, German manufacturers! Seriously. The Jetta’s maintenance was stupid expensive, too.)
It’s teeny tiny. (When the Mini is alongside a semi, and that driver decides to change lanes? Good thing the Mini has some oomph.)
It wasn’t until around Thanksgiving that I knew the car was getting traded in sooner rather than later. Given that sticks are so hard to find, I hadn’t planned on trading the car in at all.
But.
I decided to tell the The Hubby of Wonder that I was done with Mini and he told me that he had started to look at Subarus again.
COVID created supply problems, be damned!
The Gee Household was getting back into Subarus!
We ordered our cars in January. (Stick shift, plus supply chain issues, blah blah blah…)
I got mine today.
His won’t get here until June.
It’s weird being in a large car again and there definitely aren’t as many bells and whistles as the Mini had, but it feels like home.
