Recovery is a Bitch

… and much needed.

In February of last year, I moved back to Cincinnati after a lengthy stay in central Ohio.  I’d been living in Columbus for eight years, and was married with a suburban house, a salaried job, and a mortgage that wouldn’t be paid until I was dead.  Well, not really.

Leading up to my decision to begin graduate school, my marriage began to fall apart.  Various reasons that are emo-filled and this isn’t the space for them.  The point is that the combination of ending my marriage, beginning a rigorous grad program, launching my writing career and moving home, all the while training for half marathons and lifting heavy weights has been taxing – emotionally, physically, mentally.  These last eleven months have been a constant swing of ups and downs, and while I’ve managed to find some bit of structure, it’s been really fucking hard.

I’m never one to reach out and say, “Hey how about some help over here?” because I don’t want to show weaknesses.  I am a stoic sort of lady, and rarely show emotion.  But damn, when I sit back and think about the ways in which this life has changed for me during this time, I realize a few things.

First, recovery (or healing, however you want to word it) is a long process.  It takes a lot of time to begin to reconstruct a life, let alone a heart broken, or an idea shattered.  I remember last spring thinking that I was all healed up and it was time to move on to the next phase of life.  Now I realize that was just glitter on my glasses.

Secondly, and maybe most importantly, I realize that it’s OKAY to need recovery time.  To take a break, a rest, to hole up in my own world for a while and process through this nonsense.  I need to take some time off if I’m ever going to get a handle on the ways life will continue to move.  Much like failing my deadlift earlier in the week, a little bit of a breather is most certainly needed.  It’s bullshit though because I like to live at warp speed all the time, and time wasted is … time wasted.  There are something like eighty six thousand seconds in a day, and I want to make the most use out of each one of them.  But that’s not going to get me anywhere if I can’t lift my own weight.