Dealing with My Own Ghosts

Dealing with My Own Ghosts

February 11, 2017

Reference: The Complete Runner’s Day-By-Day Log

2017Calendar,

By: Marty Jerome

January Journal

This beloved journal has been one of my greatest allies of all time in my quest to fitness. I have been a faithful user since I was in my early twenties. Every year I look forward to getting a hold of the upcoming one. This diary is well organized , better than any other by far! One of the my most motivational tools that really ignited me, is this January’s reflection. It hit home the minute I set my eyes on it. My never ending injuries that have cornered me into a never-ending hiatus are my always existing physical ghosts! It is like walking dead, but alive. Everything seems like a blur, I don’t know how I survived all through these years since my physical ghosts have been haunting me. My injuries come and mock me day by day! For me, it is not so much about aging, I have the proper instruments to always work around adding another year to my annual repertoire. Reaching another milestone age-wise didn't hinder my performance, my injuries are what murdered me alive, obliterated my mind, slaughtered my body, and impaired my enthusiasm almost permanently!  It hasn’t been easy, but tomorrow will be a new beginning to have a ruthless face-off with them to put an end to this vicious circle.

This powerful reflexion goes like this…

Ghosts

Not usually, but sometimes, starting new is profound. After a surgery, a divorce, or a barren and prolonged loss of self-recognition, one random day old running shoes will glare at you. Read into their scowl what you will.

Man, are those first workouts vindictive. When the inner yelps and throbs subside, do yourself this favor: Do not moralize. Forget the past, the runner you were or wanted to be. You owe nothing to a prior training program, no debt to a muddied racing bib or a cherished trail. Baby, you are born again.

Celebrate this liberation if you must (at least, when everything ceases to hurt), but one way or another, lay plans to use it – resolutely or even with reckless hope. Leap the fence with imagination, and worry about the practicalities only after you’ve landed in a heap on the other side. The danger of starting over is that you probably know more about training than is good for you. The slow and uneven progress, the banal and frequent interruptions that cheat long-term goals of the consistency required to make them real – these things wear away at determination. They mock high ideals.

This is because a runner’s memory is both a treasure and a curse. It won’t let you lie to yourself, because progress is measured in miles logged, workouts completed, pounds shed, finish lines crossed. Your memory of past training prepares you in the most practical ways for what lies ahead, especially with the business of setting goals and organizing workouts that deliver results. But the ghosts of injury, big and small failures, and obdurate boredom in daily workouts also linger in the brain, sucking the lifeblood from a new training program before you’ve even taken the first step.

Do you listen to or ignore all this chatter? You really have no choice, so there’s no need to fight it, though finding ways to quiet it down does wonders. Head games that try to deceive memory are a fool’s errand. Better just to simply use what you can. Starting over requires the courage of working with what you already know about yourself.

Muscles have memories of their own, and not just the kind that nag at you when you walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night. There’s even some science, however sketchy, that runner’s who have been away for a very long time return to peak fitness far faster than beginners. Perhaps this is because the memories in your muscles and those between your ears work together to propel you in the most efficient manner, to signal the onset of fatigue, to remind you that however much you are hurting at the moment, there’s still a little fuel in the tank.

Never mind how all this works. Even if your last training program went up in flames, memory is your uninvited ally in starting over. Sure, it takes courage. But there’s also the prospect that with new goals, you will scare away old ghosts.

Clocks

Clocks

Cold Play

The lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg and plead, singing

Come out of the things unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head and a
Trouble that can't be named
A tiger's waiting to be tamed, singing

Confusion that never stops
The closing walls and the ticking clocks gonna
Come back and take you home
I could not stop, that you now know, singing

Come out upon my seas
Cursed missed opportunities am I
A part of the cure
Or am I part of the disease, singing

You are, you are
You are, you are
You are, you are

And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares

Home, home, where I wanted to go

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My most faithful companion

My most faithful companion

has been by my side all my life

February 7, 2017

By: Gina Yoryet Román

In my culture people are very apprehensive of el muertito – a dead person that comes to haunt people every so often to posses them. They affirm that it is a lost soul that is not at peace and for that reason, it comes to claim a life. They are panic-stricken about the so called muertito. This abstruse belief is implausible to me, what can dead people do? They are no longer alive, like the word itself describes it. There are other things I am battered by. When I was a teenager, a rebel with many causes, the reason underneath it all was, my insecurities, the bleakness in my future. I was daunted by the unknown. Long ago, when I was hit by a car while riding my bike to work, devastation brought me down after I was told that my spinal cord had been severely damaged and that I´d  never be able to do any competitive sports. I turned around and proved those doctors wrong! I went on to become a competitive athlete. 

Later in my twenties I was afraid of not being able to rise to the occasion professionally, financially, spiritually, physically. Yet, all that angst was fruitless because I prevailed through God who has always lit my path. I was also coerced by my own uncertainties since I never came acquainted with the word believe. There´s no one to blame, it is simply my stoic culture, my upbringing. Something that I will always be disapproving of particular aspects. I also distressed about not finding a lifetime partner some day, but at the same time, that was the last thing in my mind.

Later in my thirties, there was something ticking inside of me stronger, clearer as time progressed, yet I was anxious to take the first step. But I did. I embraced my fears for the first time, and walked hand in hand with them. I decided to use them to my advantage and do the best I could. I joined a few other business and professional women and contributed to HERspectives - Rules and Tools that Build Successful Women. How I Achieved Work, Life, Balance, a powerful accounting about the challenges of creating and sustaining work, life, balance. A chronicle that aims to help women solve the universal challenges we all share. This forthright narrative describes the hurdles of ordinary women who have thrived and prevailed amidst it all. I was also reluctant to become a simultaneous interpreter, face Mike, and do public speaking…but I did. I am still as terrified as day one, but the difference is that I get a hold of myself, each time I save myself through prayers, and through my ABC's.

Each day fear is manifested to me through marriage, through the loss of Victoria Esperanza on January 2016, through my mother´s illnesses. Sometimes I am awakened at dawn and I can´t help and think about failing at my marriage, being jobless, failing at success, all the world crisis, crime, violence, corruption, my own internal crisis. Every day I am caught off guard when I become acquainted with the unknown, about what the future holds, whether I’m meant to do this or become that. I am dismayed about failing spiritually, physically, financially, personally, professionally. My most faithful companion has been there from day one, and I don´t think it will ever depart!

I fear about my past clawing its way out, and that nightmare that haunted me almost every night during my adolescence. On one hand, I can be daunted by these dreams, but on the other hands, I know deep down, that I have a very resilient mind. Despite of it all, I challenge my fears and hold on to hope in the midst of this mundane gridlock…For my flaws and apprehension make me stronger, and they push me to thrive higher, smarter and better. For this reason I have done everything I have set my mind, heart, soul and spirit to, by making fear one of my best allies. 

“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”

Georgia O'Keeffe 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"