my run cycle

Jenny Columns:

Hating living in the Haight.

Jenny's neighbors. Neighborly attitudes in San Francisco.

Jenny and her roommate have a house guest from Texas.

I'm getting to the Forrest Gump stage in my life at the moment. It's the beginning of the second year in my two year running cycle. The time when I consider which ultramarathon would be most fun to do over a weekend.

This is what the first year is usually like:

Month 1

I start going out with you. Life is blissful for three weeks. I'm in love. I go "grocery shopping" at Whole Foods. We eat meals together, and they are meals in the parental sense; you know, a meat, 2 veggies and a carb. Casserole dishes get pulled out from the cupboard and the dust and mites wiped out. Food is sautéed, not nuked. We drink wine together. And the bottles actually get finished rather than sitting there turning into slimy vinegar.

I work less. I don't get up at 3am on those mornings I can't sleep to go work on my computer. I have lazy sex with you instead. I work to pay my rent, I don't work to live.

Pretty much, this matronly blanket wraps itself around me. I start thinking kids are a possibility within 10 years and not just a scary reality.

I no longer run daily. I'm not looking for that runner's high. I'm high on your company. I go for nice relaxed half hour runs when I remember while you're asleep in bed on Sunday mornings.

Month 2-4

My apartment is bigger than your apartment. I live alone. It becomes our apartment. I've encouraged this. In fact, I probably went out and bought a spare closet or something during Week Three. This is my home, this is your home, let's make a closet together.

Except, now your clothes are in my way. They're annoying me. This is MY apartment, not yours. I work here. I live here. You're in my space, you're cluttering my mind. Your dirty laundry pisses me off. And why do your socks seem so big and thick and tubey when they're stuck in my underwear drawer?

Things aren't going so well between us. I'm beginning to feel like I'm drowning. Like I'm losing myself, losing my personality, losing my aloneness. Losing my me.

So, I become quieter, less keen on those Betty Crocker evenings in the kitchen and more interested in my work. And you're confused and start to demand more time. More of ME.

I start to run because it numbs my brain. It quietens the confusion. It kills the feelings. And it makes me feel good when I stop. It makes me feel good about myself. Because, clearly, I'm not doing so well on the relationship front so I like this easy way of feeling good about me.

And you just get more confused. You were such a different person when we met, you say.

But that wasn't really me, I think. That was the big con. It must work well because you've fallen for it over and over again. Each time, I fool you.

And I keep running.

Month 4-6

We probably haven't made it this far. But if we have, I get up at 4am every morning. I've taken on more work than the entire population on the 1BX Express. The work consumes all my time. Because that's less time I have to spend with you. To talk with you. And it's more time spent on getting my ME back. My aloneness back.

That's what I say to myself. All of a sudden this has become a control issue. My time, I can do what I want with it. Why I don't do something fun with it, God only knows.

You've written off those Week Three evenings spent in the steamy kitchen. Who remembers them? Sometimes you'll peer into the fridge and all you find are empty 2 liter bottles of Diet Coke and browning iceberg lettuce. Can I make you dinner, you ask?

No, I'm too busy.

Now I run in the morning and I run at night. I run at night because I'm tired from getting up so early and so I run to wake myself up. And to kill the nasty feelings inside. It's become a necessity. And I run at night because that's when you're not working.

Month 6

We break up.

Now I can run all I want to. I'm relieved.

Month 7-12

It's just my running and me. Now my running has become the other person in my life. But I make time for you. I can always make time for you no matter how busy I am. You don't change and you don't ask much of me. You were there when I was nineteen. You haven't changed since last time. You never do.

You're a demanding S.O.B. If I don't tend to you early in the morning, you nag at me all day. You're there, just on the edge of my brain. So, I usually hang out with you early in the morning. When the mornings are warm and the winds are low. We get on best then.

Sometimes you and I will sneak off to Mt. Tam together during the day. It's just our secret, you and me. We hit the trails, and crunch through the leaves and bite into the mountain as we climb up for a better view. There isn't a trail or a distance that we can't go together. We only stop to cross the crickety bridges because they're slippery with moss and even though we're together and we're a pair, no one knows we're here. And no matter what you think, I'm certain I don't want my ankle caught in that rock below. Because I know you're not strong enough to get me help.

And then we go home and there's this peace in my mind that you've given to me that no one else ever has.

Sometimes I think as we embark onto Year Two that it must seem a strange and lonely thing to outsiders but it's not. You put things in perspective in my mind. Life doesn't seem so big and scary anymore after our runs. And that's worth all every nagging moment you scratch away at me.

ANON

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