being brave

The Mansons are facing some tough times right now.  Sid has a mass on his voice box, and is about to undergo testing to figure out if it's cancer.  His doctor is also testing him for Multiple Sclerosis, after years of weirdness.

Maybe it's not cancer (but maybe it is).  Maybe it's only benign nodules (but maybe it's not).  Maybe it's not MS (but maybe it is).  We'll have answers soon enough, and I think knowing has got to be so much less scary than this uncertainty.  I can't speak for Sid, but I know I'm going about my daily business feeling like I'm waiting to be hung: the noose is around my neck, and I know the floor is about to drop out from under me, but I don't know when.

Right now, running is what is keeping me sane.  What I've learned while outside sweating and plodding are keeping me from losing myself in anxiety, and until now, I had no idea there was anything at all to learn from putting one foot in front of the other, but that itself is the lesson: all you can do is put one foot in front of the other.  Keep moving, and eventually, it will be over.  It feels like it will last forever, but it ends.  It will end.

Plus, The Zone.  Oh, The Zone.  Fuck a runner's high, The Zone is where it's at.  There's nothing at all but the silence.  Nothing else.  No worries, no doubts, no voice in your head telling you shit you don't want to hear.  Just the rhythm of your breathing and your feet on the pavement.  I call it my brutal meditation, and it is glorious.

Sometimes I have to remind myself, I am doing this.  I am running, I am going to nursing school, I am going to sit in the waiting room while Sid has his surgery and wait to hear what the doctors say.  I am doing it.  I am brave, I am strong, I am doing this.

And it helps.