Posts Tagged ‘ Hurt ’

Lonely Road

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The post painful run each week, is what I call the “fasted-state” run, where I do my run 12 hours after my last meal. It teaches my body how to deal with the pain of running on empty, and how to use fat as an alternative fuel.

Sometimes I wish there was a way to train my mind in the same way. To put it through some sort of mental hell, and teach myself how to deal with extremely upsetting situations. The fasted-state runs are painful, no doubt, but for some reason, I like the feeling of an empty stomach – it makes me feel lighter and less weighed down by worldly problems and my thoughts are clearer, for the focus is all in the mind.

As I went out for my run today on an empty stomach, I started to think through the past week. I am grateful for the comments I’ve received from some of you in my previous post, urging me not to retreat to deep into my own world. Perhaps the alternative way out is to open up and talk about things, and I know that there’s someone who’s there, always ready to listen.

But how do I tell him that the disagreements with my family mostly involve him? How do I tell him that there seems to be someone at home who’s ratting on me to my parents? How do I tell him that my mum heard me talking to him over the phone once, got angry and stomped out of the house and left for dinner without me? That I was left starving at home for the rest of the night? How do I tell him that now every weekend, my parents no longer ask me out to dinner, leaving me at home in an empty house all by my lonesome self? How do I tell him that talking on the phone with him is hard because there’s no place in the house that I can be without someone overhearing? How can I tell him that I’m so paranoid now that I don’t even use my home phone to call him anymore? How do I tell him that I hate myself for lacking the courage to take a firm stand on this – to choose between giving this relationship up or to bear with the ostracism at home and the pain of having to hide and lie everyday?

I can’t tell him all this, because it would seem like it’s his fault, when it isn’t. I can’t tell him all this, because it all stems from my own lack of courage, which makes me hate myself even more.

How do you tell someone that they are the reason you;re happy, but also the biggest source of your pain and sadness?

You don’t. Because you can’t.

2012
08/29
CATEGORY
Reflections
Uncategorized
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Thoughts in Bed

Thoughts in Bed

Last night as I lay in bed, I felt ready to think, ready to be honest with myself. The thoughts just flowed, and somehow I realized that perhaps he never loved me that way; that way that I wanted to be loved. That truly, what we wanted from a relationship was different, and what he missed about us, was just the physical intimacy that we shared. Things come to a head when you realise that you’ve probably been deluding yourself, and trying hard to believe that someone else truly loves you for who you are and not what you do. You hurt for a bit, or maybe you’ve just grown numb to the hurt. But I don’t feel the least bit of anger, just an uncertainty as to what to do, that comes along with a wounded heart

I wonder why I keep going back to be hurt in the same way, why I don’t simply accept that he never truly loved me for who I am.

Perhaps because I thought he knew that being too obliging is my weakness, that I try never to say no to anyone because I like to put the happiness of others before my own. And I thought that he’d be the last person to take advantage of it.

2012
04/13
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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Pushing the Limits

Pushing the Limits

Each time I feel the increasing drive to train and hurt, it seems to correspond to a decreasing level of happiness and satisfaction. But training helps, putting your body through the same amount of pain that you mind is going through – it’s almost like an alternative to self-harm and cutting.

Someone once told me that I should get a pet dog, so I could talk to it and it’ll love me more than it loves itself. No, too much commitment, I said. I have to feed it, take care of it and take it for walks. My bike, that’s different. It goes through hell with me, it’s there when I’m hurting the most, it needs minimal care, and doesn’t get upset when I neglect it for a few days.

And so I ride, hard and long. If anything is for sure, it is that I’m happy when I’m riding, truly happy. And for once, the expectations and competitiveness doesn’t kill the love for cycling. But what’s best is that training pays off, unlike many other things. I’m faster than I’ve ever been, and feel as if I can go faster. At some points, you start being uncertain and afraid of putting more hope into getting faster, but we should never be afraid of putting in the hard work, and never fear the big dreams. I’m running faster than I ever have, if I can run a 47-min 10k after a swim, I believe I can go under 45 min fresh. If I can average 35km/h on my 60km bike rides, I can do a 40km time trial in slightly over an hour. If I can swim 27:40 in the lake, I can swim a sub-27 min in the pool.

People have been telling me that I’m going over the top with my training and expecting too much of my body; that I’m too hard on myself. But as they say: if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.

2012
04/01
CATEGORY
Reflections
Triathlon
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Drifting.

Drifting.

All of a sudden, it feels as if I’ve lost my anchor, the one who keeps me grounded. I have plenty of goals set for myself and truckloads of expectations to live up to, and yet the days seem directionless and empty.

I train each day, pushing myself harder and harder. I tackle my greatest weaknesses, I run hills and hit intensities higher than I’ve ever hit. I head to the pool and torture myself with 32x50m sprint sets, forcing myself to hit the wall every 48 seconds and pushing off every minute. My lungs burn and my arms ache, but nothing takes away the emotional pain. Each time I feel upset, I head out for a run. I don’t have a predetermined distance, and I end up running much more than I should. My achilles tendon is giving me trouble, but recovery run dragged out into a 12km run in the freezing downpour.

It seems that we can’t even be friends, that he doesn’t even want to talk to me anymore. For some reason it is hurting much more than it should. Like all the sadness that have passed over me came back with a vengeance and hit me harder than ever. I wanted so badly to ask to see him, but his cold replies made it seem like a bad idea. So I held myself back, and pretended that I didn’t want to get back together.

Then suddenly, it hit me that deep down I had planned to spend the rest of my life with him. But now all that I have left, is lot of hurt.

2012
03/31
CATEGORY
Reflections
Relationship
Triathlon
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Pitting the Heart against Reason

Reason says let go, move on. The heart says hang on, fight on. Each day passes in a blur, no texts or calls to look forward in the night, only longing and emptiness when bedtime comes. So afraid and tired of all the problems, no strength and will to deal with them. A huge part of me longs to go back to where we were, to what we were; but the reason and logic intrude, reminding me of the hurt, the physical intimacy that never was and never will be sorted out, the insecurities that I hide, and the fears. Are these problems that could have been solved if I tried? But I have tried, and I ended up hurt. I gave up trying, but I’m still hurting.

2012
03/26
CATEGORY
Reflections
Relationship
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Far From Home

12 hours of traveling brought me here, a place that I’ve been before, where familiarity meets foreign. High up in the hills, where the weather is cold and winds chilly, where the waters of the lake vacillate between hot and cold, depending on where the sun shines. We live in huts amidst trees and forest cover, with overhanging balconies overlooking the beautiful lake, and the mountains in the distance.

The calm and serenity of the surroundings stands in start contrast to the inside of the huts. In mine, bags and shoes are spewed across the floor, loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter line my coffee table and my bike sits in the vast, spacious toilet. Bottles of water accompany my laptop and notes on the reading desk, in preparation of long studying sessions in between the training and racing.

I shut my door to the noise of my travel companions and team mates. I politely decline invitations to head out for lunch, choosing instead my bread and energy bars as sustenance. I stay away from the rooms where the activities are, where everyone gather to play card games and chat, choosing instead to do my readings to the sounds of Jack Johnson. I nap intermittently, awoken by thirst and hunger. I take a bath, and suddenly realised while looking in the mirror, how thin I looked. Lean and mean; that’s what a friend told me. Weak and broken; that’s what my mind says. I’m physically stronger and faster than I’ve ever been, but mentally more broken than ever. Perhaps it makes sense, because all the mental and emotional pain has been diverted to training and racing with a vengeance. I push myself to break past limits, I’ve been hitting crazy training volumes, spending insane amounts of time cycling and running harder than ever on every single run.

6 days away in a place far from home, but the heart is elsewhere.

2012
03/24
CATEGORY
Relationship
Triathlon
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Waves of Change

The sea is a wondrous thing, and its associations with my life are numerous, so is its resonance with life. As a triathlete, the sea or the open water is the most essential feature in training and racing. Everything starts with it, and is done around it. It’s unpredictability and constant motion is the greatest challenge, and the key to  conquering the open water swim, is to be one with the sea. To understand the currents, to move along with the ups and downs of the waves. To breathe when the tide takes you upwards, to sight when you’re atop a wave. You put your head down to swim when waves instruct you to, when it brings you down and immerses you whole.

Sometimes, our lives are inundated by these waves of change. When nothing seems to stay constant, and everything is couched in unpredictability. it is often our greatest fear to be unsure and uncertain of what is to come, for we’ve been conditioned to prize comfort and stability above all. The waves of change have taken me all over the place these few weeks, to places that I want to go, and also to very unpleasant places. In the end, you invariably end up in a much different place and situation from where you started. I lament the change but also try to accept it. Some changes upset me, some changes excite me. Along the way as you get swept along by the currents, and you lose some things. I’ve lost someone who I didn’t learn to treasure; I didn’t  hang on. If I did, I wouldn’t have lost. It’s almost surreal, how one person can be the best part of you, and then all in an instant, gone from your life completely. I wish we were at least still friends, but it seems like I’ve incurred his hatred of sorts.

Each day I drift about in the ever-changing currents of the sea of life, slowly learning the skills of surviving. Relax, I tell myself, it is just like open-water swimming. Impose your will on life, just as you would swim to get to where you want to in the sea, but along the way, you have to play by the rules of life, just as you have to adjust to the waves and tides of the ocean. Sometimes you mis-time a breath and end up choking on water, a small hiccup, but nothing serious. Although the journey will never get easier, with experience, we learn to make it more pleasant. Be as one with life, do not fight what is stronger than you, but stay the course and one day, you’ll get there.

2012
03/14
CATEGORY
Reflections
Relationship
Triathlon
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Life.

Today, I’ve heard the same message from various friends, in different forms. Perhaps they did not mean it, but that was how I interpreted it. The most poignant reminder came from a close friend, who reminded me:

“And most of all, don’t play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else’s. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better for having made them, and you will be a fuller and a stronger person.

It’s been said—and I’m not sure I agree with this, but it’s an idea that’s worth taking seriously—that you guys belong to a “postemotional” generation. That you prefer to avoid messy and turbulent and powerful feelings. But I say, don’t shy away from the challenging parts of yourself. Don’t deny the desires and curiosities, the doubts and dissatisfactions, the joy and the darkness, that might knock you off the path that you have set for yourself.”

This has been recurring theme over the last two weeks, a reminder of what I’ve been too afraid to pursue, a scar that reminds me of a love that I wasn’t strong enough to fight for. Perhaps we need to lose some to gain some. This is the lesson I’ve learnt, that my life belongs to me and only I control it. I know I am not completely free, but I do whatever I can to live for myself. I’ve made risky decisions, and have wild plans to put myself outside my comfort zone. I push hard in training, and allow myself to hurt. I booked air tickets to places that I’ve always wanted to go. I will travel alone, walk this earth alone. I made plans for December, to spend a freezing winter in a country as close to the North Pole as possible. Booked a hostel room in a village in Finland to see the Northern lights, but till now have no idea how to get there from Helsinki. I’ve taken the plunge and made plans to move out of home, to think about what I’ll be doing when I graduate. Seizing control in every way possible, and living my own life.

I’ve made a mistake of throwing away a relationship that meant so much because I was afraid, and it will continue to haunt me, but the hurt is mine alone, and all I can do is live with it. Take risks, live a life that you love, surround yourself with people who actually care, write your own story.

2012
03/13
CATEGORY
Living The Good Life
Reflections
Relationship
2 comments

Hurt.

Need to stop thinking about what could have been. For some reason, people have been telling me to fight for what I want, that my time has come to break free. Maybe it is, I need to fight for what makes me happy. I have plans, leaving on a jet plane for a long time. Away from the hurt, away from the people who make me unhappy, all by myself. Maybe I’ll learn to live without him, but I know I won’t be happy. Every day, I resist the urge to pick up the phone, to call him to tell him that I still love him. It’s for the better, I try to tell myself. He’s probably moving on much better than me.

2012
03/10
CATEGORY
Reflections
Relationship
1 comment

The scars you can’t see are the hardest to heal.

It’s strange how you feel yourself sinking slowly into the depths of depression; it’s like when you’ve crashed while cycling – the moment when you’re falling, everything slows down and you know you’re going down for sure, but there’s simply nothing you can do about it, except brace yourself for the hard landing. I am getting tired of staying at home, there mere act of being home at the same time as everyone else kills me. How could I have messed up my life so bad? To everyone else, I had everything I could possibly ask for, everything was going for me. Then all in an instant, one fatal mistake, one moment of naiveté, and everything is lost. You become enemy number one at home, you can’t focus enough to perform up to your usually standards. It’s killing me inside, but it’s a hard lesson I have to learn. He kept asking how I could leave him when I said I never would; it took everything for me not to ask, where were you when I needed you?

2012
03/06
CATEGORY
Reflections
Relationship
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