Despair

As if the pain wasn’t torture enough, the uphill sucks every cheerful notion from my soul, and I feel like there is nothing left of me but an empty shell. It’s like the Dementors from a Harry Potter movie have descended on me and are sucking out the last wisps of physical and emotional well-being. As I trudge up the hill I am left with a soulless despondency. There is no hope. There is no joy. There is only this step, and the next, and a seemingly infinite number thereafter, each causing my heart to pound furiously and my lungs to heave. My legs are dead. My arms are dead. The effort is excruciating, and I want to cry out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

But God didn’t do this to me. I did this to me. The vague recollection that I’ve survived this before is my only salvation. I am in the 3rd mile of a 4-mile pickup, which was preceded by a 6-mile warm-up. The final sum will be 11, but I dare not think of a number that large. It is too much to face and would be the end of me.

My mind is bombarded with all too many pain signals telling me to slow, to stop, to sit, but some small remnant of will allows me to focus on taking this step. I have faith that the next step will take care of itself. I will face the challenge of that next step when it comes. There is only the here and the now. The next step, and all the future steps are too much to face. All I want to do is take this step, knowing that it is one step closer to my car and eventual relief from my misery.

This hill is the last major obstacle on today’s run. It drains what little emotional life-force I have left. My pace has slowed, my stride-length has shortened, and I am barely moving, all of which means that my time spent in this self-inflicted hell will be even longer. It will take twice as long to run up the hill as it will to run down it. If I could climb this hill any faster it would shorten my misery, but there is no hope of that. It’s a physical and emotional impossibility. I have nothing more to give. Concepts like “mind over matter” and “giving “110%” are silly phrases that coaches and sports writers use. At a moment like this there is nothing to do but endure and persist, though my endurance left me miles ago.

I only know that this too shall pass. I cling to the fact that the hill is finite. I know this full well from past experience, and that knowledge gives me my only hope. If the hill is finite, then my suffering must also be finite, and that if I can only continue and not give up, the hill will end and the pain will lessen at the top.

And so the top of the hill is finally reached, and I start to fall down the slight decline on the other side. My stride lengthens and my pace quickens to keep me from falling on my face. I feel some wind on my cheeks that was not there before, and a small hint of life returns to my legs, and the sense of deliverance makes me want to scream, “I’m Alive! I’m Alive!”, if only I could breathe.