"You've got to stop reading into everything that she says"
This statement has been playing around in my head for most of this week, mostly while I've been running. It is fair to say that I am a master of the art of 'reading into things' or 'actually working out the truth' as I like to call it. A gift handed down to me by my father, with the express wish that I use this power only for doing my own head in, with Dad being the Overlord, Emperor, and King of being mortally offended by near enough anything that you happen to say to him, the uncanny ability to take real offence to a light hearted joke, and to not forget that joke for a number of years. Exactly like this paragraph basically*
I am my fathers son, so I have been blessed/cursed by this power too. Nothing gives me greater joy/pain than to listen to something someone says to me, convince myself that the statement hides what they REALLY mean, then letting what I think it means take over my rational head. It's not all my own doing though, we all do it. And it will only ever really take control when it involves affairs of the heart, when you want something so badly that you completely convince yourself of what you want to hear, rather than the glaringly obvious.
I fell in love with Lisa Davis on a school trip to Big Pit when I was 8 years old. I knew it was love because she'd sat next to me on the way there. I should have known it was over when she sat with Gareth McCarthy on the way back. I didn't want to believe what was happening in front of my very eyes, and I convinced myself that it was still me that she wanted. So I did the only thing any proud man could do in that situation, I sent her a note saying,
"Is it over between us?"
2 agonizing minutes I waited as the note was hurried up the bus,
"Yes" came the resounding reply.
You'd think that this would be the end of the matter, that a 'yes' in capital letters would make me understand that it was not destined to be. No, I'm afraid that I don't simply stop at the first sign of rejection, I like to have it hammered into to me time and time again, like being viciously beaten by a group of gypsy bare knuckle boxers. A few weeks went by and my family and I went on holiday to Holland, where I found a little craft fair selling traditional Dutch pottery. Looking back now it was clearly Chinese made tat being sold at a tourist trap market in Holland, but at the time the little china windmill was a beautiful ornament. I bought one for Lisa, convinced that she would finally understand the deep, never ending torch I held for her, and that she would realize that I was in fact the man she should spend the rest of her life with, or at least until we got to high school. On the first day back from holidays I walked up to her friend and asked her to give it to Lisa (bravery with the ladies has always been my strong point). During the next break Lisa's friend came back and gave me the windmill back,
"Lisa says thanks but she doesn't want it, she really likes it but she can't accept it"
The only part of this I even hear is 'she really likes it' and I was ecstatic, completely assured that my taste in shit pottery was the same as hers, and that in that case we'd eventually be together forever!
It was this bad when I was eight, 25 years later and I'm still having to deal with this madness!
I've become so adept at it now that I read into what people don't say, and how they don't say it. I can read into peoples actions or lack of actions, and make sure that it comes out on my side. I read into what my friends say about things, then I ignore it and believe what I think they said. I read Emails and change the words around so instead of it saying,
'we've decided that we'd rather you didn't come to Ibiza with us, what with you being bat shit crazy!'
I read it as
'it would be bat shit crazy if you didn't let us come to Ibiza with you!'
It's out of control, and a borderline mental health issue, but I've got the cure. You stop. you just stop trying to read into what people say and just hear what they said instead. Easy. You also completely stop speaking to anyone about anything important at all. Ever.
I go out to run 20 miles with my friend Tom. Tom's planned the route and we head off. The best thing about running somewhere you've never been before is that you don't know how far you've run, or how far you've got left. Unless you've got a fancy watch like Tom has, which bleeps every time you reach a mile, and then tells you how slow you did that mile. Otherwise you're just free to jog along and take in the sites. Brixton, Clapham Common, Putney, Richmond, Morden, and South Wimbledon all glide past. We start off pretty quick but the pace drops off after a while and I take the chance to just enjoy it a have the banter with Tom. It's a good 3 and a half hours or more before we hit the 20 mile mark and the slow pace has gifted me a burnt, red, face.
Even at a slow pace the body needs a few days to recover. The next day my legs feel good with no aches or pains but I can feel a slight heaviness. I take a 2 day break from running. During this two day break I fly to Germany and back in a day for a job interview and to give a presentation. After the interview I am sitting in the canteen waiting for my taxi when the woman who'd interviewed me walks in, sees me on the other side of the room and waves. I wave back and carry on reading my book**. I look up and she is walking towards my table,
"Are you waiting for your cab?"
"Yes" I squeak in reply, I am incredibly nervous, this job is a huge thing for me,
"That was really good. really, really, good. Thank you. It will be completely my decision, and you'll be hearing from me next week, have a safe journey home" then she kisses me on both cheeks and walks off.
Obviously I can't read into what she says so I've assumed that the interview went badly, she didn't think it was very good, and she is going to give the job to someone else. Because that's what she meant right?
* - caru ti yn fawr iawn Dad xx
** - Mr Briggs' Hat - the story of Britain's first railway murder. Amazing book
Monday 29 August 2011
Tuesday 16 August 2011
The circle of life, my blisters, and the fact that we are just animals
Like most sports running is intertwined with your state of mind. If you are in a good mood your run will be one of enjoyment and ease. If you are unhappy, your run will become longer and fraught with errors or injury.
I have had my mum to stay with me for 5 nights, I would describe my runs during this period as frustrating, annoying, and fury inducing. This is not to say that I don't like my dear Mam, I love her with every fibre of my being, she gave me life, looked after me until I was able, and never judged me. She has just loved me unconditionally for 30 years. The other 3 years she wanted to kill me because I wouldn't sleep as a baby. My mother nearly threw me out of a bedroom window after 3 sleepless days and nights. Ask her, she'll admit it.
It is not my Mum that drives me mad, it is the fact that our roles have been reversed, time is playing its last cruel joke on us, turning the carer into the cared. We have swapped roles now mother and I, before she would tell me what to do, and how to do it, guiding me around and making sure I didn't fall flat on my face. Now I'm the one making sure she doesn't headbutt the floor. I find myself saying things to my mother that she used to say to me -
"No, No, come on, it's this way"
"Watch where you're going! You'll get run over!"
"Put it down! That's not yours"
"Right! time for bed for you then"
And I am furious that I have to look after her now, because it means that I must face up to the reality that one day, hopefully in 50 years from now, my Mam won't be here to look after me anymore. And the fury I feel when I have say these things to her just hides the indescribable sadness that engulfs me when I consider that fact. I cry about it sometimes, not in front of her, or anyone for that matter but I don't believe in holding emotion in anymore, why deny the inevitable? the inescapable? My parents won't be here one day and it sucks the life out of me.
I wasn't always this sad about my parents being dead though, at times in the 80's I recall shouting that I wished they WERE dead but I didn't mean it, I was a teenager, we all said things we never ever meant.
The relationship with the parents has three main periods -
Period 1
0 - 12
Your parents are super heroes who know everything, give you everything, protect you, make you laugh, teach you, shout at you. You fear them because they are the all knowing, the keepers of secrets, on first name terms with Santa AND the tooth fairy! They know the answer to every question you can think of, and still manage to make you feel like you are the most important person on the planet. They're indestructible and so very strong.
Period 2
13 - 24
This is the hardest period for all concerned, the period when you realize that your parents actually know very little about a lot of things, and that they actually hid, lied, and glossed over loads of things in life that you weren't expecting, like death, working for money, emotional heart ache, and life generally fucking you over once in a while. These caring idiots lied to you for years, telling you it was going to be OK, kissing it better, when in actual fact all that was going to happen was that life was going to get harder, and kissing it better would become really inappropriate and could get you arrested.
Period 3
25 - The rest of your life.
This is the period that is actually the most wonderful, when all the cats are out of the bags, when you can sit with your parents and talk about life without them having to lie to you anymore. Life shit? turns out that your Dad had a pretty tough time growing up too. Tough job? turns out your mum did that hardest job in the world in raising you, then went out and did a normal job on top. And then it slowly dawns on your stupid, selfish, arrogant, brain that your parents have lived a life very much like yours, they've felt what you've felt, seen what you've seen, and that they had to then protect you from all of it until you were old enough to cope! And it's this period when you love them so much more because they are you, and you are they.
And then they go and ruin it by getting old and forcing you start looking after them. The bastards!
I suspect Mum plays it up a bit, the selective hearing, the tiredness, the confusion at fancy kettles, and let's not even get started on the Internet.
My mum is the only person I know who owns Sky+ in her house, but doesn't know how to use it in mine! As if the location makes it impossible for her to understand.
I'd cry if I wasn't laughing.
I have left London to go for a run around Cardiff for a few days. This is a new run for me, new music, and new orthotics in my trainers. I am pronating heavily into my right foot, meaning that as I land I lean and push onto the inside left of my right foot. This causes annoyance for the first 5 miles, pain for the next 5 miles, then blood for any miles after, The orthotics should balance me out.
They don't. Half way round the outskirts of Cardiff Bay the pain is for more acute than running without them and I have to stop and take them out in Grangetown. I run the rest of the way back, and hit a good time, but the damage is done. I've got a hole in my foot.
I spend the rest of my time in Cardiff seeing a new born baby. This baby is 4 weeks old, and already has the makings of a beautiful human being, if you can get beyond the constant crying, shitting, crying, and sleeping that it does. Babies are to me the last great example of why we are simply animals. A baby comes along and everyone close to that baby wants to protect it, to care for it and keep it safe from harm. And this one is no exception. I held her in my arms and I was quietly confident that I would happily kill anyone or anything that came near it to cause her harm. The cat got a couple of nasty stares from me those few days let me tell you!
It is a primal feeling, it's not my baby, it's not even my blood but I felt a instinctive need to protect her and you see that a thousand times stronger in the parents. They've changed. They're still your friends but they don't care about you that much anymore, the only thing they care about is that little baby. It's amazing and beautiful. A simple joy to watch.
And it changes everything, the biggest game changer in life. Going to Cardiff would normally involve drinking beers all day, watching some sport, then drinking wine until the early hours whilst having loud, drunken, misunderstandings with all concerned. This time I was up at 8am, sitting around watching the baby, listening to the baby, holding the baby, playing with the baby, then a walk into town and back again, then putting the baby down, then going to bed. It was the best 3 days in Cardiff I've had in 4 years.
It takes 4 days for the foot to stop being a hole but it's sorted now. I'm now alternating between two sets of trainers. One pair a half size too small but don't hurt my problem foot, and the other pair that fit but make me pronate. Some thing's got to give, and it ain't going to be me.
I have had my mum to stay with me for 5 nights, I would describe my runs during this period as frustrating, annoying, and fury inducing. This is not to say that I don't like my dear Mam, I love her with every fibre of my being, she gave me life, looked after me until I was able, and never judged me. She has just loved me unconditionally for 30 years. The other 3 years she wanted to kill me because I wouldn't sleep as a baby. My mother nearly threw me out of a bedroom window after 3 sleepless days and nights. Ask her, she'll admit it.
It is not my Mum that drives me mad, it is the fact that our roles have been reversed, time is playing its last cruel joke on us, turning the carer into the cared. We have swapped roles now mother and I, before she would tell me what to do, and how to do it, guiding me around and making sure I didn't fall flat on my face. Now I'm the one making sure she doesn't headbutt the floor. I find myself saying things to my mother that she used to say to me -
"No, No, come on, it's this way"
"Watch where you're going! You'll get run over!"
"Put it down! That's not yours"
"Right! time for bed for you then"
And I am furious that I have to look after her now, because it means that I must face up to the reality that one day, hopefully in 50 years from now, my Mam won't be here to look after me anymore. And the fury I feel when I have say these things to her just hides the indescribable sadness that engulfs me when I consider that fact. I cry about it sometimes, not in front of her, or anyone for that matter but I don't believe in holding emotion in anymore, why deny the inevitable? the inescapable? My parents won't be here one day and it sucks the life out of me.
I wasn't always this sad about my parents being dead though, at times in the 80's I recall shouting that I wished they WERE dead but I didn't mean it, I was a teenager, we all said things we never ever meant.
The relationship with the parents has three main periods -
Period 1
0 - 12
Your parents are super heroes who know everything, give you everything, protect you, make you laugh, teach you, shout at you. You fear them because they are the all knowing, the keepers of secrets, on first name terms with Santa AND the tooth fairy! They know the answer to every question you can think of, and still manage to make you feel like you are the most important person on the planet. They're indestructible and so very strong.
Period 2
13 - 24
This is the hardest period for all concerned, the period when you realize that your parents actually know very little about a lot of things, and that they actually hid, lied, and glossed over loads of things in life that you weren't expecting, like death, working for money, emotional heart ache, and life generally fucking you over once in a while. These caring idiots lied to you for years, telling you it was going to be OK, kissing it better, when in actual fact all that was going to happen was that life was going to get harder, and kissing it better would become really inappropriate and could get you arrested.
Period 3
25 - The rest of your life.
This is the period that is actually the most wonderful, when all the cats are out of the bags, when you can sit with your parents and talk about life without them having to lie to you anymore. Life shit? turns out that your Dad had a pretty tough time growing up too. Tough job? turns out your mum did that hardest job in the world in raising you, then went out and did a normal job on top. And then it slowly dawns on your stupid, selfish, arrogant, brain that your parents have lived a life very much like yours, they've felt what you've felt, seen what you've seen, and that they had to then protect you from all of it until you were old enough to cope! And it's this period when you love them so much more because they are you, and you are they.
And then they go and ruin it by getting old and forcing you start looking after them. The bastards!
I suspect Mum plays it up a bit, the selective hearing, the tiredness, the confusion at fancy kettles, and let's not even get started on the Internet.
My mum is the only person I know who owns Sky+ in her house, but doesn't know how to use it in mine! As if the location makes it impossible for her to understand.
I'd cry if I wasn't laughing.
I have left London to go for a run around Cardiff for a few days. This is a new run for me, new music, and new orthotics in my trainers. I am pronating heavily into my right foot, meaning that as I land I lean and push onto the inside left of my right foot. This causes annoyance for the first 5 miles, pain for the next 5 miles, then blood for any miles after, The orthotics should balance me out.
They don't. Half way round the outskirts of Cardiff Bay the pain is for more acute than running without them and I have to stop and take them out in Grangetown. I run the rest of the way back, and hit a good time, but the damage is done. I've got a hole in my foot.
I spend the rest of my time in Cardiff seeing a new born baby. This baby is 4 weeks old, and already has the makings of a beautiful human being, if you can get beyond the constant crying, shitting, crying, and sleeping that it does. Babies are to me the last great example of why we are simply animals. A baby comes along and everyone close to that baby wants to protect it, to care for it and keep it safe from harm. And this one is no exception. I held her in my arms and I was quietly confident that I would happily kill anyone or anything that came near it to cause her harm. The cat got a couple of nasty stares from me those few days let me tell you!
It is a primal feeling, it's not my baby, it's not even my blood but I felt a instinctive need to protect her and you see that a thousand times stronger in the parents. They've changed. They're still your friends but they don't care about you that much anymore, the only thing they care about is that little baby. It's amazing and beautiful. A simple joy to watch.
And it changes everything, the biggest game changer in life. Going to Cardiff would normally involve drinking beers all day, watching some sport, then drinking wine until the early hours whilst having loud, drunken, misunderstandings with all concerned. This time I was up at 8am, sitting around watching the baby, listening to the baby, holding the baby, playing with the baby, then a walk into town and back again, then putting the baby down, then going to bed. It was the best 3 days in Cardiff I've had in 4 years.
It takes 4 days for the foot to stop being a hole but it's sorted now. I'm now alternating between two sets of trainers. One pair a half size too small but don't hurt my problem foot, and the other pair that fit but make me pronate. Some thing's got to give, and it ain't going to be me.
Monday 1 August 2011
My head's empty, but my legs are full.
I am now running every day. 3-5 miles one day, 7-10 miles the next until Sunday when I run a bit further. I don't plan the runs anymore now, I just leave the house with enough time to be able to get back and prepare breakfast and lunch. And I LOVE it!
Then I just feel my body, how I'm landing, if my breathing is matching my steps, and I just go. The speeds vary now too, if I know it's going to be short one then I'll quicken as much as I can, longer runs I just pace it out. I don't wear a watch either, I'll match up the time I left with the time I get back, then g pedometer it as I greedily chow down my cereal. And I LOVE it!
But the strangest thing has started happening, I don't think about much anymore, the big things at least. I may have a happy memory pop into my head every now and then, especially if I run past a place of meaning or importance. Usually it's pubs I've fallen out of, or doorways where I've stolen kisses. There's lots of those places around where I live so these little pictures pop into my head, a short, punchy memory of days gone by, but nothing substantial, nothing that follows me through the whole run, and the same goes for bad thoughts, they seem to have fallen away. It seems that the more I run, the less I think.
I must confess that I think about the marathon a lot, and what it represents. I've wanted to run this marathon for such a long time, and now it's 9 weeks away. And the average finish time I posted in London this year adds a delicious tension to Chicago. It's not a question of beating my last time, I could beat that if I spent the morning at a Pizza Hut buffet, drank a couple of pints, had a snooze and set off, I'd still beat that time, it's by how much? how fast can I go? And I know it shouldn't matter, and that the achievement is the real joy but it isn't. It's the beating of something that you know can be beaten.
There a solitariness about running, a sense that it really is you against you, and you for you. The effort you put in, the early mornings and late nights. The weird sleeping patterns and boring diet, all of these things you do to yourself in the hope of bettering yourself. You deny yourself what you want, in order to get what you really want in the future, oh sweet irony!
By all accounts I should be lonely. I don't go out anymore, I'm in bed by 11pm, up at 6am, I don't eat anything that doesn't in some way benefit my running, and I don't drink like I use to. In fact, I may have a glass of wine with a meal but that is it.
And it's shit. I hate it! I hate the lack of fun, I hate not seeing my mates, I hate the constant thought that somewhere the best night ever is happening and I'm not there. I hate seeing the photos and hearing the stories, I hate the tweets and status' I hate not being in the middle of the road at 4am kissing a sweetheart and not caring about the next day.
But I don't hate it at much as I hated a couple of months ago, when I limped over the line four hours and thirteen minutes after I'd started, I hated the looks of pity and disappointment, I hated the realization that nobody else had done this to me except me, I hated that so much more.
And this hatred is driving me forward but I worry that I'm pushing too hard, letting hate and determination cloud my better judgement, and we all know that nothing good ever came from hatred. Which I think is something from Star Wars but I can't be sure.
So I have decided to put love back into my running, and I LOVE it!
Then I just feel my body, how I'm landing, if my breathing is matching my steps, and I just go. The speeds vary now too, if I know it's going to be short one then I'll quicken as much as I can, longer runs I just pace it out. I don't wear a watch either, I'll match up the time I left with the time I get back, then g pedometer it as I greedily chow down my cereal. And I LOVE it!
But the strangest thing has started happening, I don't think about much anymore, the big things at least. I may have a happy memory pop into my head every now and then, especially if I run past a place of meaning or importance. Usually it's pubs I've fallen out of, or doorways where I've stolen kisses. There's lots of those places around where I live so these little pictures pop into my head, a short, punchy memory of days gone by, but nothing substantial, nothing that follows me through the whole run, and the same goes for bad thoughts, they seem to have fallen away. It seems that the more I run, the less I think.
I must confess that I think about the marathon a lot, and what it represents. I've wanted to run this marathon for such a long time, and now it's 9 weeks away. And the average finish time I posted in London this year adds a delicious tension to Chicago. It's not a question of beating my last time, I could beat that if I spent the morning at a Pizza Hut buffet, drank a couple of pints, had a snooze and set off, I'd still beat that time, it's by how much? how fast can I go? And I know it shouldn't matter, and that the achievement is the real joy but it isn't. It's the beating of something that you know can be beaten.
There a solitariness about running, a sense that it really is you against you, and you for you. The effort you put in, the early mornings and late nights. The weird sleeping patterns and boring diet, all of these things you do to yourself in the hope of bettering yourself. You deny yourself what you want, in order to get what you really want in the future, oh sweet irony!
By all accounts I should be lonely. I don't go out anymore, I'm in bed by 11pm, up at 6am, I don't eat anything that doesn't in some way benefit my running, and I don't drink like I use to. In fact, I may have a glass of wine with a meal but that is it.
And it's shit. I hate it! I hate the lack of fun, I hate not seeing my mates, I hate the constant thought that somewhere the best night ever is happening and I'm not there. I hate seeing the photos and hearing the stories, I hate the tweets and status' I hate not being in the middle of the road at 4am kissing a sweetheart and not caring about the next day.
But I don't hate it at much as I hated a couple of months ago, when I limped over the line four hours and thirteen minutes after I'd started, I hated the looks of pity and disappointment, I hated the realization that nobody else had done this to me except me, I hated that so much more.
And this hatred is driving me forward but I worry that I'm pushing too hard, letting hate and determination cloud my better judgement, and we all know that nothing good ever came from hatred. Which I think is something from Star Wars but I can't be sure.
So I have decided to put love back into my running, and I LOVE it!
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