Between 45 and 50% of marriages end in divorce. For some people caught up in the statistics, they can walk away from the experience with a smile on their faces. For others, the oft-times unwilling 2nd half—the ones caught in the headlights of the oncoming freight-train—the experience is a harrowing one. For some it is a liberating experience. For others it becomes an enslaving experience locking its captives in a pit of hopelessness and despondency, misery and depression.
When my world came crashing down to its seeming end, I was the deer caught in the headlights. There was no spiraling down to the bottom of my personal pit of doom and gloom—it was a flat-out, straight-down, high-speed free-fall. When I hit, I hit hard! And being the stupid and ignorant male that I am, I created a great many opportunities in the following days, weeks, and months to dig that pit deeper and deeper.
My future, I thought at that point, would end with a bottle of pills or at the business end of a 9mm. Fortunately, however, for me and the visible few who cared about me, I turned out to be too big of a chicken to actually do anything so radical—and permanent. I know I scared a good many people though.
Enter running.
I had been running for a number of years prior to this, many of those side by side with my then-wife. To be honest, the last thing I wanted was to do anything in the least bit associated with “that” life. Anything and everything brought memories of loss and only seemed to increase my sense of worthlessness. But some wise and knowledgeable friends of mine grabbed hold of me and insisted I continue running as a way to manage my health—both physical and mental.
For some time I believed that these friends had joined me on my delusional path-to-nowhere. I was invited to run the Utah Grand Slam by one of these friends. Initially I didn’t give it much consideration. “Heck no!” was my first thought. But I came around, more or less, but not for the reasons you might think. I saw it as an opportunity. Physically I was a mess, and mentally I wasn’t doing any better: Over a period of about 3 months I lost close to 40 pounds and the meds I was on had begun to wreak havoc with my equilibrium. (Actually, the latter may have had more to do with the repetitive and futile banging of my head against whatever hard, heavy, and immovable objects I could find at the time…) Regardless, running a marathon hard, unprepared, untrained, and unhealthy provided a legitimate excuse for my body to give up—to keel over and die—and for me to escape my misery.
Well, obviously it didn’t quite turn out that way. Three years later I’m still kicking and still running. My running mis-adventures that year took me from one end of the state to the other and exposed me to people I never would have met in any other way. I developed friendships and relationships unlike any other—and that has literally given my life some degree of purpose again.
No, I haven’t entirely gotten over the experience. I feel the loss each time I drop my kids off at their mother’s house. I continually mourn the relationship I took for granted and ultimately lost. But I know now that each time the hopelessness and despondency rears its ugly head, I can lace up my running shoes and show the negative influences in my life that I’ve got the determination, the drive, the willingness, and the ability to run it into the ground!
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