Why is this so hard?

I am tired of fighting my body. I am tired of waking up, tentatively stepping out of bed, hoping that today nothing feels off. I don’t really even remember what it feels like to feel 100%. Some days I run with no niggle or even pressure in my healing ankle. Some times I am just sitting reading and can feel something. It keeps me from ever fully relaxing or being at peace. Will I ever heal? Will today be the day?

Having a niggle is exhausting. How does one go out at night when there are PT exercises to do? How does one explain that they don’t want to try a new sport because they don’t want to go further back in recovery? How do I explain that no, I cannot get pizza right now because I am icing my ankle? That I don’t even know if it is helping but it is doing something for it and that must be helping right? How can I explain that though I ran 16 miles yesterday with no pain, and still feel no pain, that I am afraid to run? I want to join your run so badly, I want to show up, but I just don’t have the confidence in my body and spending an hour with you now is not worth another month of recovery time. How much of a bitch does that make me?

I spent a lot of my twenties teaching myself how to show up. I disguised my self-centeredness with social anxiety or training when really I just didn’t want to give others my time. Sure, I did have a diagnosed mental health disorder, but once I healed from that, I really had no excuse not to show up except laziness or self-centered justifications. Running helped that. I met a few people who encouraged me to join them. They kept inviting, after years of my saying no. Finally, I showed up once, then again, and again. Some days it still takes work and I’d rather not, but each time I do it, even if it’s type 2 fun, I know this is part of my illness. The lingering affects of a disorder I healed from, the control I still feel I need over my life. Showing up means giving up that control to the universe and situation. It’s so hard sometimes, but whether I want to or not, I have forced it to become a part of my life.

Today I long to show up. I want to join every group run, every breakfast, every chance to establish relationships and just be around good people. Having an injury of this nature makes me seem like the person I have grown away from. The charactistics of my niggle, able to run one day, maybe have to cancel the next, are the similar to those of the friend that cancels last minute or morning of. They mirror those of the person who would rather avoid social situations because relationships take work, and claim socially anxious or sick/tired. Sometimes those things are valid, but if I am being true to myself, most of the times I have used those excuses I am actually just overwhelmed with the effort it takes to show up and don’t want to essentially tell my friends they aren’t worth it.

I am sorry if I did this to you, and I apologize for the future times I will do this, taking the easy way out of relationship building. The actual thought process goes something like this:

“They want me! They invited me! I am validated! I have social status! That is all I want from this relationship. To know others want me. Now that I know that, I can make up an excuse not to go!”

I have never actually thought those things all together, but when I boil it down after weeding through all my justifications, that’s kind of how it is right? Everyone, myself included, just wants to be liked and, in this age of social media, relevant. When I am invited, I am relevant and remembered. Someone clicked like on my photo. In the past decade there has been a huge shift (exacerbated by the pandemic) to get away with not showing up and still being validated in the building of a relationship. We are all “socially anxious” and also so lonely we take to internet rabbit holes and echo chambers to feel like the problem is everyone else, not me. Why should we go out, why should we show up? Someone might have a differing opinion then mine and they are obviously wrong and stupid. CANCELLED.

I am sick of this niggle because I want to live in alignment with all the shit I just wrote. It’s so easy for me to sit here and rant when I cancelled our group run on Monday at Skratch due to weather, because I can’t run on the ice. I also know that one I get in the habit of denying social opportunities, it becomes easier and I become calloused to ignoring the needs of my relationships. I need to show up for my mental health, because it is the hardest thing in my life to do.