I would like to apologize to whoever I pissed off because after a few runs of the best years in my life from like 2016 to 2018, I have been on a downhill trend since 2019 in so many ways with 2022 being the worst year of my life in about every way possible. Still, my email signature reads “ I am and always will be the optimist, the hoper of far flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams.” Some people have interpreted that to mean the simple colloquial meaning of an optimism of seeing the glass half full rather than half empty. I’ve never quite understood that allegory since it’s an even split. When it’s not, are we supposed to say 1/10th full rather than mostly empty. Optimism for me is to stand in the pouring rain and believe the sun will shine again.
I crashed into someone at a race recently, one of only two ‘good’ races I have had in over a year and like the days of old, one I signed up for the day before. They said my social media posts and this blog is not quite as positive as they remember it. I didn’t know what to say to that. There is some acknowledgement in that; I know that I’m worse for the wear, more than I’ve been in anytime I remember but hey I have a damaged memory. That’s a great irony because people still say I have more energy than anyone I’ve met but one of the women from the past recently said that my vitality in life was one of the attractive features of mine. Only so much credence you should give to your exes (and I have enough in Texas to where I may have to retire in Tennessee) since it didn’t work out but it definitely made me wonder.
I’m thankful to be alive each and every moment of every day. There are moments of those who are supposed to be the keepers of the flame that feel more abusive, more chokeholds or slaps in the face of those who are supposed to be caretakers. The medical bill for some bloodwork that was quoted to me for $50 came in at almost $4000. Several phone calls etc end with ‘there’s nothing else we can do for you” but they didn’t do anything for me to begin with. As I write this, I think I’m done with anything new in the medical world. I know I’m only 42 years old and this and that but I made peace with dying a long time ago and I’ll do the upkeep that I’m supposed to on what we know but I am exhausted. I’m not quitting; I don’t quit (trust me I did a half marathon yesterday in the slowest time I’ve ever done that course in a lot of pain in the humidity yesterday and there was not a moment of walking despite all the pain). But there is acceptance and not signing up to tilt at certain windmills anymore.
I know no one fully gets it; I still have people who know that I walk into the room and am happy to be there and to see everyone because I genuinely am still happy in the freedom I take. But again “oh freedom, that’s just some people talking when my prison is walking in this world all alone.” I don’t think I’m getting bailed out of that prison ever cause a poor boy from an immigrant family in Mexico and small town West Texas to college in Napa Valley has lots of friends but such an odd story that relatability is both legion and hard. As a college professor once shared, “you are unique just like everyone else.” I have turned town book deals though it was offered at two different points in my life. (In case you’re wondering, I would call it “The Thrill of Hope, a Soundtrack of Quiet Desperation” with each chapter named after a song.) I am tempted to write it more and more these days but I don’t think I could with the honesty and rawness that I’d want because while I see and would project most of what’s gone wrong on to myself, sharing the details of other people’s lives who matter to me, well oddly enough too many of those people read this blog and appreciate but are very private. Most of them realize that it’s just hiding in public which is actually far more freeing than just hiding or hiding in therapy or telling almost enough to your friends to where you feel honest. But while some people live life to add this time or that one to the memoir, I think all/almost the things I’ve ever read that were based on true stories it was people living with intent to live more than intent to remember that made interesting.
So I’m ready for this year to end. I’ve kind of given up all old traditions about Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s that I once had in this rough era thinking maybe it was time to let the old ways die. I’m hoping the carma days run over my dogmas and I just hope for a really really boring year in 2023. I am going to run the Austin marathon in February which is the furthest I can dream ahead. It’s odd, in July it was the first time my oncologist stated/believe I wouldn’t die of cancer according to the stats but my father’s death in 2021, my grandmother’s in 2022 and invariably the number of cancer friends that continue to give me survivors guilt make me have a harder time envisioning too far down the road. Right now I’m tired enough to where I’m not even thinking to my next MRI which was my previous method of keeping time. But for today and at least tomorrow, I still want to live like Don Quixote but not die like him. I want to die an unreasonable man, tilting at windmills till the end. I want to love though I gotta get better at that pure and chaste from afar if Dulcinea even exists anywhere except in my projections. And when I walked away from totaling car accident number 2, I ran the fastest race I have in about a year and a half, the only good one since June of 2021 (a friend joked I should have more car accidents). But with simple materialistic or any other sorrow, even if I can’t go as far, I still want to run where the brave dare not go. And well if I can do that, I think my heart will be peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest.
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