Fat

It's 10:00AM. I'm covered in sweat, hot, and regretting every decision I've made that's brought me to this point.

I'm running a 5K on a treadmill as the final leg of a practice indoor triathlon, something I got up at 6:00 to prep for. It's not the actual indoor triathlon I signed up for--that's three weeks away. I got up early on a Sunday to do a practice triathlon.

I'm being a little dramatic. I was regretting the decisions I had made, but only because running a treadmill is the most boring thing in the world. While I'm running I'll cope by texting bad selfies to friends, asking if they know that treadmills were originally designed as a punishment, and generally being a whiny little bitch.

At the end of the run I'll hop off the treadmill and get hit by a rush of euphoria.

While I didn't win the genetic lottery in . . . basically any other way I'm lucky enough to be a person who gets a runner's high almost every time I work out, regardless of the activity.

I'm feeling even better when I check my watch stats and see I've cut an entire minute off my normal swim time. I've been working really hard since November, cross and strength training and it's nice to see that hard work paying off.

I trade my sweaty workout clothes for a towel and decide to hop on the scale before getting in the shower.

That's exactly the place where the bottom falls out.

"I deserve this" I think, tearing up in the shower. "I had that extra drink on Friday night and ohmygod refined pasta? You slob, what were you thinking?"

"I deserve this."

* * *

I am in the best shape of my life. 

I've lost three dress sizes, my mile times are faster than they've ever been, and my last doctor was thrilled with my progress. When people ask me my secret, I laugh and say "Oh, you know, diet and exercise." 

Here's my actual secret. 

Every morning I get up and weight myself, often more than once. Depending on what the scale says, I'll have Breakfast A (70 calories) or Breakfast B (an indulgent 140 calories). I will go to work and try to keep my total calorie consumption throughout the day to around 700 calories, mostly eaten two hours before I go to the gym, which I visit six days a week. I'll spend 90 minutes Spinning, will shower, and will walk the 1.5 miles back to my house. I'll eat a carefully portioned dinner, ensure that I haven't had more than 1,200 calories in a day and will skip eating back most of the calories burned during my workout. More often than not, I'll halve my dinner so I can have a beer to help me sleep. 

If, say, I've done something egregious like go to dinner at a friend's house and eat more than the calories I have allotted, I will get home, put on my running clothes, and run until I'm at my calorie limit for the day. 

I do this every day for nine months.

At the end of it, a new doctor will ask how I made such progress. When I detail my diet and exercise routine for her, she looks me dead in the face and tells me "That's not a lifestyle change. That's an eating disorder."

"No, it's not. Fat girls don't have those."

She almost slaps me.

I would have deserved it. 

* * *

"I mean, for someone who works out so much, I don't understand how you put on so much weight."

I've heard no fewer than 17 variations of this comment throughout my dating life. 

This particular time I lock myself in the bathroom and cry for hours. 

I am three years and thirty pounds from the best shape of my life. I fell in love and stopped working out so much because I was so happy. I fell out of love and drank too much and ate too much comfort food as a method of coping. Everything about my life feels so out of control at the moment that the constant refrain in my head is "You deserve this. You let yourself go. You're an ugly fat monster."

"You deserve this." 

* * *

It's 10:00PM. I'm covered in sweat, hot, and regretting absolutely none of the decisions that brought me to this place. 

I'm sleeping with someone new. It's the first someone new since my ex-husband and while it's nothing serious, it's been incredibly meaningful for me. He's a genuinely funny, kind, and warm person and I couldn't have written a better first-since-my-ex-husband.

I can't get out of my own head. 

The second my clothes come off, all I can think about is the stretch marks on my boobs, the cellulite on my ass, my disgusting belly. I'm convinced that this is a pity fuck or a meh-I-have-nothing-better-to-do fuck or a I-haven't-had-sex-in-awhile-and-I-can-close-my-eyes-and-imagine-Scarlett-Johansson fuck.

It's not. 

I get a little bit better the more I get used to him (see previous comments about funny, kind, and warm), but I still can't settle down. Every time we eat together he comments on how little appetite I seem to have (It's one of those unspoken fat girl rules. Eat less than you want and try not to enjoy it). Based on the number of times I've said "Oh, I got busy and had a late lunch" he must think I'm the most overworked employee in the place. 

I make a lot of jokes to him about how I'm the incarnation of a goddess of sex, here for his adoration and awe, but the truth is that I'm five years and ten pounds from the best shape of my life. And for as much as I'd like to be proud (and am proud, if I'm being honest) of the fact that I can do an indoor tri for practice on a Sunday morning, there's an extremely loud voice in my head talking about how maybe my fat ass should walk the two miles home and I can probably skip that post-workout bagel and oh, by the way, maybe you should cancel your plans with funny-kind-warm tonight.

Afterall, it's not like I deserve it. 

30x30 #1 Run a Ragnar

A little over a week ago, I ran a 12 person, 205 mile, 30 hour relay race.

Ragnar Napa Valley was really what drove me to write my 30x30 list. It was going to be the crowning jewel of the list, the capstone to everything I did.

Yeah, the list is only about one third finished. 

I've checked off some big things that I haven't blogged about because, well, because I haven't blogged about them. I saw Hamlet live. I directed a 5K. I gave away my copies of books that changed my life and I accomplished random acts of kindness (normally in the form of baked goods). I'm giving myself until January (when I wrote my list last year) to finish the rest of it. There are things that are unlikely to happen (Century Ride, duathlon) and things I'm really looking forward to doing (best friend road trip to South Dakota, visiting the World's Largest Ball of Twine Made by One Man, hearing the Minnesota Orchestra in Orchestra Hall). 

But Ragnar was really it for me. 

One of the biggest things I wanted to do with the 30x30 list was pick things that were fun, challenging, or places where I could grow. 

Ragnar was all of those things for me. 

There are a lot of things in my life right now that are challenging my ability to write, and write well, because the sheer enormity of the experience or the emotions is hard to capture. So here's Ragnar, in brief. I learned what it means to be a team captain. I ran across the Golden Gate Bridge (Bucket List Achievement Unlocked!). I relied on strangers and watched as they turned from people I met on a San Francisco street to teammates I was excited to see at the exchanges. I found out that I'm tougher and stronger than I knew. I discovered what it means to have someone at home say "I've missed you" and mean it.

More than any of those things, though, Ragnar reminded me that I have a home.

Let me back up. For months now, I've been looking at job postings in other places. I've had the itch to move, mainly because I've rarely stayed put for this long. I was anxious and getting ready to bail, because if I didn't bail, I'd never be happy.

The dumbest part about that whole thought process?

I was happy.

Not annoyingly, disgustingly, ridiculously happy, but just happy. Content. Pleased with the direction my life was going. So, of course I had to move. Because it was possible that annoying, disgusting, ridiculous happiness was waiting for me at some other point of longitude and latitude.

Trust me, I know.

After a lot of long conversations with Kerry, I managed to calm down and resign the lease on my apartment. I told myself I would give this place another year and I was going to San Francisco in a few weeks, a city I love and a place where I've considered moving many, many times. It would be enough to get the travel bug out of my system and I could find out if my love affair with the West Coast was still a thing.

So I booked plane tickets and Air BnB rooms. I bought and broke in new running shoes and made a Wonder Woman costume. I counted down days and racked up miles. I argued with my running partner and listened while he sang me Justin Timberlake. I dreamed of Golden Gate Park and seafood.

And, meanwhile, in my real life, I got an amazing performance review at work. I met someone. I went to birthday parties and had long heart-to-hearts with my best friend. I made art for my walls and unpacked the last of my boxes.

When I landed in San Francisco the city was everything I remembered, everything I loved (a little hotter and dryer, no doubt). And I wandered Golden Gate Park and went to Muir Woods and walked next to the ocean and ate seafood. I ran Ragnar.

It was amazing.

And the whole time I was there, the Midwest poured out love and support via phone calls, texts, emails, and Facebook. I received a "kick Ragnar's ass" gift that made me melt. My Midwestern teammates, used to my emotional reactions to things, rubbed my back and insisted the team stop for chocolate milk at the end of my long run.

While I ran along the Golden Gate bridge and through Napa's rolling vineyards, I reveled in their beauty and the ability to do this difficult thing and be supported by people who love me. I kept myself going by thinking of all the people back in Middle America who were cheering me on. I made it up those final hills thinking about my job and how much I love it (also about how I will be a prairie runner FOR LIFE).  When I watched my running partner finish his final leg, I got excited about all the races and trips we have in store for us.

If Ragnar made me realize that I'm stronger and tougher than I thought, California forced me to realize that the Midwest made me that way.

Put another way, I love you, Minnesota.

Or, another way, see you next year, Great River.

Just Another Girl

"What song is this?"

Over the sixteen odd years of our friendship, Michelle and I have come to a tacit agreement with regard to driving. Namely, I don't drive. Ever. Instead, I'm in charge of watching for deer at dusk, navigating (inexpertly), keeping an eye out for roadside attractions to take goofy pictures at, and (most importantly) am in charge of the radio.

"It's your jam!"

"Nope. No idea what this is."

"The Killers."

"Honey, my jam is Shot at the Night."

"Oh, right! This is my jam."

She shakes her head.

"Give me a break. It's been a rough couple weeks."

"Just this once, I'll let it go."

***

On the list of embarrassing places to start crying, a feminist sex shop has gotta be at the top. 

I know because over the past week I've made a list of embarrassing places to start crying, as a result of crying all over the damn city. The bathroom at work is fine as long as you can muffle it. The car is less than ideal as there's always the chance of causing an accident. The bar during trivia and the bus are also right up at the top of the list. 

And I'm not talking dignified, silent weeping. I'm talking loud, totally unanticipated sobs that make the entire establishment turn and look at you. 

It's been a pretty great week.

So crying in a feminist sex shop is awkward for a lotta reasons, not the least of which is that you're harshing everyone's dopamine high. When I start welling up in the middle of the Smitten Kitten, I reach into my purse for the packet of tissues that's been in there for the past couple days, wave my friend off (wondering for a moment if refraction is distorting the size of what's in her hand) and bolt for a bench outside. 

The woman I'm with comes out about twenty minutes later and starts rubbing my back. "Are you all right?" 

"Yeah," I manage to hiccup out. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." 

"No, it's my fault. You said you didn't want to come. I hoped it would cheer you up."

"Yeah. It's just . . ."

"Oh, honey. I know." 

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I put my head in my hands. "I forgot it was like this." 

***

"I think that saying that you love someone unconditionally is idiotic."

I was prepared for a lot of things on this road trip, but this conversation was not one of them.

"Why?"

"Because no one means it. If someone murders your whole family are you still going to love them?"

"I think that might be a bit of an outlier."

"What if they spend all the money in your joint account? Screw your best friend?"

"Really, I think that people who say that they'll love someone unconditionally would accept those as, you know, extenuating circumstances."

He blows a raspberry and I start to laugh. "Why," I ask, "are you so worked up about this? Has someone claimed that they'll love you unconditionally recently?"

"No, but I'm a firm believer in saying what you actually mean."

I study his profile for moment before saying softly, "Yeah. Me too."

***

"Kels, do you think that maybe you're pushing yourself just a little bit too hard?"

I'm standing off the path, about waist-high in some bushes, dry-heaving. I shake my head. "I'll be fine in a minute." 

"I'm just saying, maybe I need to take you over by Michelle's so you can talk it out?" 

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and emerge from the bushes. "I am so fucking sick of talking. Let's just run."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm certain." 

***

"I don't get dumped."

"Kelly, everyone gets dumped." 

"I don't. It's one of those laws of the universe, like the second law of thermodynamics or how Doctor Who is the greatest sci-fi show ever written. I am always the rejector, not the rejectee. It is known."

"Yes, well, I mean, it's really not that different is it? You'll do the same things you always do: drink a lot of bourbon and listen to a lot of Patsy Cline, eat Indian takeaway, and run until you're exhausted." 

"You forgot "Come to in four weeks with a new PR and a haircut I don't remember getting." That's always an important part." 

"See, it's not actually that different."

"It is."

"How?"

"All that serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine made me stupid. They made me giggly and gushy and just stupid." 

"What's different? That's what happens every time with you." 

I sigh, giving my best impression of eighteen year old, emo Kelly. "I felt like I was someone special. Like this time I was more than just another girl." 

30x30 #30: Healthy Fasting Blood Glucose

Sometimes being an adult is amazing.

I mean it. Sometimes it's a business dinner and drinks on one of your favorite patios to celebrate a successful collaboration. Once in awhile it's waking up to someone bringing you coffee and making pancakes while wearing your bathrobe. One of the amazing things I still haven't gotten over is not having to do homework when I get home (post-graduate disorder anyone?).

Sometimes being an adult is terrible.

Of course it is. Sometimes it's standing in the kitchen at 2:00am taking a break from a work project to eat peanut butter out of the jar because you've been too busy to shop. Once in awhile it's waking up to find a note that says "I'm sorry, I just can't." One of the terrible things I still haven't gotten over is how many people have claims on your time.

About a year ago, being an adult suddenly got really, really terrible.

I was still reeling from the emotional shitstorm that was the 2012 when a friend announced that they had recently been diagnosed with Type II diabetes. I was having an extremely difficult time managing my obsessive-compulsive disorder and immediately upon hearing that she had diabetes I decided that I had diabetes (and high cholesterol and heart disease and and and). I immediately made an appointment with my doctor to go in and have a full physical and get all of these things checked.

Before I continue, let me be clear about one thing. These concerns, while certainly amplified and made worse by the OCD, were not entirely unfounded. I have a family history that includes high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, various forms of cancer, and mental illness. Our genes are a mess. Armed with the knowledge that I was taking proactive steps to manage my health, I went into my doctor feeling empowered.

I'll never forget the phone call from my doctor. I could hear her flipping through my chart.

"Yeah, your LDL and HDL levels look good, so do your triglycerides. Your pap was normal, your breast exam was normal, your other tests were all negative."

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. It appeared the issue was, as it always seemed to be, my over-active amygdala freaking everything else out. I was all right. I was better than all right. I was healthy. I started to say my adieus when she paused.

"Oh."

Oh followed by a long stretch of silence is never something you want to hear from your doctor.

"What?"

"Well. Kel. Your fasting blood glucose is . . . elevated."

"What do you mean "elevated?""

"I mean it's not diabetic, but given your family history it gives some cause for concern."

We then have a long conversation about what cause for concern means. Essentially it boiled down to the following: either make some significant lifestyle changes or be diabetic in ten years. Possibly.

Normally when I have a bugaboo about diseases, it's a bugaboo about a disease. Measles. Ebola. TB. Something that is deathy and feels like it comes from a science-fiction novel or is antibiotic resistant.

With the exception of diabetes.

I watched my grandfather deteriorate slowly from Type II diabetes and it was horrible. I refused to conceive of a future that required insulin shots and compression socks for anything other than a distance race. I insisted that my doctor give me information on how I could address the issue of an elevated blood glucose.

What it boiled down to was "move more, eat less, eat selectively."

At this point in my life I was already running three days a week, averaging between nine and fifteen miles weekly. Getting told I needed to move more was like a punch in the gut. And while my food consumption had never been, you know, the best, I had never thought I ate a particularly trashy diet.

But, with the specter of shots and socks constantly in front of me, I upped my workouts from 30 minutes to 60, and then again to 90. I walked to and from the gym. I religiously accounted for every single calorie I put into my body. I taught myself to eat fruit when I'm hungry and that dinner can, on some days, just be vegetables.

It was amazing.

I'm serious. It was like one of those before-and-after weight loss reality shows, the ones where the contestant realizes how much their life sucks because they can't do what they want. I was scared. It worked. I dropped thirty pounds in a year. I biked 150 miles across the state of Minnesota. I ran through two Polar Vortexes and dropped a minute off of my mile times. I'm to the point now where a seven mile run is no longer a thing, it's just a run.

Yesterday I was sitting with a new doctor doing the whole "getting to know you thing." I made a comment that I'm turning 30 in September and she asked how I was planning to celebrate and before I knew it we were talking about 30x30 and I was telling her that one of the goals I had was to bring my blood glucose levels down to a normal range.

"Well."

Well followed by a long pause is never something you want to hear from your doctor.

"What?"

"I mean, you're doing everything right. It sounds like you've made some progress, but the thing is, sometimes genetics just gets you in the end. So I don't want you to get too down on yourself if today's labs don't come out the way you want them to."

I was a little devastated (have I mentioned that I believe with the right data and the right work ethic I can actually achieve just about anything?) and I didn't want hear that all of my hard work may have been for naught. She gave me the normal "It won't have been for nothing, these kinds of changes are amazing" speech, but I wasn't  really listening. As we wrap up she shakes me hand and says "You should have your results on the website tomorrow."

Imagine the nail-bite-y 24 hours I've had.

When the email popped up today that my results were available I broke off the conversation I was having with my coworker and raced outside to check them on my phone. I was preparing for the worst, incredibly upset that I was going to have to report failure not just on the 30x30 front but on the "I'm a healthy-able-to-take-care-of-myself" grown-up front as well. By the time I had clicked through to the website I was shaking.

Normal.

Just . . . normal. Not bad. Not good. Just right where they were supposed to be.

The note that accompanied them was "These are good, but you need to keep up the work you've been doing to get them like this." It hit me that over the past year I've been treating these changes in my life as a means to an end. That some day I'd be able to go back to not tracking everything I eat and scaling back my running and biking miles, getting something less than 300 minutes of exercise every week. I suppose I still could, but the problem is that doing so makes it all the easier for genetics to get me in the end.

It was terrible, the sudden realization that I'll have to be vigilant about the bits of my genes that are trying to kill me faster than I had planned.

While I was standing outside shaking my mobile buzzed with a text. "Hey, there's this adventure race I want to do, will you do it with me?" I recalled the seven and a quarter miles Andy and I ran last night and how it wasn't a thing, just a run. I started laughing when I remembered our bike ride from hell last summer and considered the prospect of coaching someone through a half in D.C. next spring.

It was amazing, the sudden realization that I am a different person than I was a year ago. That I am stronger, faster, and better because I have to be vigilant about the bits of my genes that are trying to kill me faster than I had planned.

Sometimes adulthood is amazing and terrible all at the same time.

Beauty #8

Hanging above my scale there's a list of five reasons to go for a run, RIGHT NOW,  instead of putting it off for another hour or day. They range from "race results are forever" to the name of a recent paramour with a line drawn through it.

A few months ago aforementioned overnight guest stopped the proceedings to say, off-handedly, "For someone who talks so much about running and cycling, I thought you'd be skinnier."

If I live to be one hundred, I will never, never forget how that made me feel.

A week later, on my way out the door for a run, I tripped and fell down the stairs, spraining my ankle, putting my spring half marathon on hold, and leaving me with nothing to do but to obsessively weigh myself and (equally obsessively) think about what he had said to me.

I thought you'd be skinnier.

***

I started running again, post-injury and post-rehab, three weeks ago.

It's been a pretty mixed bag.

I am, hands down, one of the least naturally athletic people I know. Running doesn't come easily, and I don't often leave runs thinking That went great! I'm also, you know, sort of hard on myself, so I very rarely know that I did well on a run. And it means something to me to know, unequivocally, that I did well at something. I've been working really hard to ramp up the mileage, go for more runs alone, get to a point where I depend a little less on my running partner for motivation and a little more on myself.

My motivation these days seems to be that goddamn sentence.

I thought you'd be skinnier.

More than the sentence itself, it's how I reacted when he said it (and other horrible things) to me. I didn't kick him out of my house. I didn't call him out on his shit. I merely accepted that These are the things men think about when they see you. These are the things they have always thought. These are the things they will always think. Get used to it. 

Looking back on that moment makes me feel weak.

***

Yesterday I ran my first race in years without my running partner. I ran it coming off of an injury and a bad night's sleep and after running without a watch for over a year. I had no idea what my pace was, I couldn't make an educated guess as to splits, but I knew that I had been running a little faster and that I might be able to set a new PR at this race. In the end, I grabbed  a permanent marker, marked my old splits on the inside of my arm and guessed that I was probably running about fifteen seconds/mile faster. I thought that if I pushed myself I might be able to pick up another fifteen seconds a mile. I put those paces in a column next to my old PR and decided that if I crossed the finish line one second ahead of the old one, I would be pumped. If I crossed slower than the old PR, I would just call it a day and be pleased that I finished after coming off of a non-trivial injury a few weeks ago. 

I beat my old PR by four and a half minutes.

This is, for those of you non-runners out there, not an insignificant improvement, especially over a four mile course. 

When I crossed the finish line I was dry-heaving. My iliotibial bands promised to make my life miserable over the next forty-eight hours. I was red-faced and taking huge gulps of air. It was not a photogenic finish (mine never are). But despite the blorchiness of it, I was grinning like an idiot.

***

Here's the secret, I don't run to be skinny.

I mean, I would love it if all the running I do would translate into a more delicate figure, but that ain't going to happen.

I run to be strong.

That's it. That's the reason I run. It's the reason that guy's name is still on my Go for a Run list. He's not there because I want to be as skinny as he (and all the asshats like him) think I should be. He's there to remind me what it felt like to feel weak. He's there to remind me that I never want anyone to make me feel that way again.

There's an impossibly good photo of me from the race finish yesterday. It is (to me, at least) the sexiest photograph I've ever taken (despite, you know, being spandexed up). As of today, it's hanging with the Go for a Run list not because it's an inherently good photograph, but because it reminds me (in the inevitable moments of vulnerability that come with, you know, weighing yourself) of what it felt like to know, even at the cost of dry-heaves and tight iliotibial bands, what it was like to finally feel strong again. 

Endurance

I don't understand where you fit in genetically in your family.

What do you mean?

I mean, genetically.

I'm the spittin' image of my mom.

No. I mean, everyone else in your family is so . . . thin. 

-A Bennie

I am constantly amazed by the things people say to fat girls. 

I've got a collection of them. A Worst-Ever Greatest Hits of the things people have said to/shouted at me when I'm out for a run, when I'm not wearing much, when I'm crossing the street next to the library, when they meet me for the first time. It's become a hobby of mine, a little list I (unhealthily) keep in the back of my head.

And it's not just men either.

It would be easier if it were. Just chalk one more up to the patriarchy and move on. Hang out with your girlfriends. Have some wine and gripe about the asshole that you kicked out of your apartment the night before. Tell the story so many times that it becomes just another bad date story. 

I have never in my life been a small person. Never. A combination of stunning non-athleticism combined with a household where carbs were comfort and a shit metabolism, and I've just never been a small person. 

I don't know that I'll ever be.

That's not to say that I don't try. 

Huh. With as much as you talk about running, I just thought you'd be skinnier. 

-A First Date Who Did Not Get a Second

In the late fall of 2007, I started running. 

I was exceedingly bad at my job. I was (at best) uninterested in the relationship I was in. I was anxious and depressed without ever understanding why. I was at a creative and emotional standstill, feeling like my life was on pause, reasonably certain that if you put your hand on my chest, you wouldn't be able to feel my heart beat. 

Honestly, I don't know how I didn't give up. Running was hard. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I went from a sedentary lifestyle to one where I was running four days a week in a few short months. And some time during that long, snowy winter, I fell in love with running. I fell for long Sunday runs next to the Mississippi. I learned to appreciate a perfectly executed Farmer's Blow, the way other runners would nod their encouragement to my chubby self as I shuffled along. I became acquainted with the Runner's High, that blissful rush of serotonin and dopamine that comes along occasionally during a workout, the rush that leaves you dizzy and giddy and feeling like you're about to fall in love.

Have I mentioned that my idea of a great first date is running a 5K together?

Anyway, running became . . . not a hobby so much as an on-again/off-again relationship. A real love/hate relationship. I ran throughout graduate school. I ran every once and awhile while I was in Duluth. But more than falling in love with running, I fell in love with, well, for as corny as it sounds, measuring myself. Setting big, impossible seeming goals and striving for them. Setting plans and sticking to them. Running introduced me to other distance events, particularly cycling.

Falling for running changed my life. 

I fell in love with the simple idea of sheer, grinding endurance. That if you look deeply enough into yourself you'll find what you need to (in the poet's words) keep on keepin' on. 

I'd like to work out until my thighs don't touch anymore.

Yeah, that's absolutely doable. 

Really?!

Yeah, Kel. When are you going to have one of your legs amputated? 

That's a shitty thing to say.

That's a shitty, unhealthy goal to have. Your thighs are supposed to touch. Do I need to show you a pelvic bone diagram?

-A Conversation with My Running Partner. 

It's midday on Saturday. I'm on my bed with my leg in my running partner's lap. He's doing the Ottawa Test on my right ankle. I whiffed it down the (inside) steps the night before and sprained my ankle pretty badly. He's checking to make sure that I don't need to head to urgent care to have x-rays taken (seriously, PT's make excellent activity partners).

"Well," he says, moving off the bed. "The good news is that I don't think you have a fracture."

"What's the bad news?"

"You need to kiss that half marathon in March goodbye, because you won't be running for six weeks."

"What?! What about biking?"

"With the way you like to go? Absolutely not."

I try to bargain with him a little bit, but he's having none of it. It finally sinks in that he's serious, that while I planned 2014 to start off with a bang, to be the year of endurance, of challenges falling neatly before me, the whole damn year has now been moved six weeks back. I'll be starting training from scratch in February instead of building up from where I was before falling down the goddamn steps.

It takes about fifteen seconds for me to lose it entirely and burst into tears.

Jesus! What cup size are those? G?! H?!
-Most Paramours

I don't like my body.

I know that's not, you know, unusual for a lady, but I really, really, REALLY don't like my body. I've never felt like a particularly pretty person. I've never been a huge fan of mirrors or clothes shopping.

Yes, I know. Howling vortex of insecurity. Fuck off.

Even now, with 10% less of it than there used to be, with a cute haircut and better skin, and excellent clothing, I don't like my body. The only times I've ever liked it are when its carried me from start to finish lines. When, sick with a chest cold, my running partner and I ran my fastest mile times ever. When we crossed the finish line of a 150 mile bike ride. When I ran off of the Gary Bjorklund course to hug my mother, who was waiting for me.

I like my body when it's moving, when I can shout down that list of nasty things people have said to me with the reply "when was the last time you ran six miles? Or biked fifty in two hours? Or went hiking or walked five miles home from work just for the hell of it, because it's a lovely day outside?"

I like my body when it's helping me run away from something.

Hence the crying like an idiot when I was told I was benched for the next six weeks. Six weeks with nothing but pilates, modified yoga, and strength building exercises. Six weeks were I can't pull my hood over my head and run through the dark, leaving everything in the dust.

Six weeks of nothing but sheer, grinding endurance. 

Idiot

The alarm beeps and brings me around breathy, edgy, and completely furious.

It's a Monday morning and I've spent what feels like the entire night dreaming, well, one of those dreams.  It starts the way those dreams always start  ohbabyI'msosorryIwassuchanidiot. It (d)evolves the way those dreams always do and when the alarm rousts me I swear I can still feel his lips and teeth on my skin and I desperately wish there was enough time to go for an extremely fast, frigid, five mile run.

Dreaming about men from your past is awful.

Dreaming about men from your past and waking up edgy to a Monday morning is worse.

Dreaming about men from your past and waking up edgy to a Monday morning alone is the absolute, unequivocal ohmygodthefucking worst. It's a punishment of Dante-esque proportions and I slam out of the house entirely pissed.

***

"This may be a bigger picture question, but why do you need to say anything?"

Carliene pauses and adds "That's a social worker AND friend question." 

Social workers, it turns out, make excellent friends. 

I said it last winter, after Carliene and Krista came up and took care of me when I was incapable of taking care of myself. I think it again, nearly a year later while Carliene and I are in the midst of a long walk. Not the best at navigating relationships in any capacity, I am in the process of attempting to ford the goddamn Rubicon of relationships. I'm no Caesar (not even a lesser), and need to bounce some of what I've been thinking off of someone who is . . . better at emotions? Isn't quite so myopic when it comes to another person's perceptions? Just isn't me?

"I'm better." 

She doesn't say anything, so I plow ahead. "I am better because of what happened. In a significant, measurable way. But I don't know how to say something like that without sounding like I'm a bunny boiler."

"Have you considered not saying anything?"

"I can't. I've become a blurter. If I don't say something it'll accidentally come tumbling out anyway."

"That's pretty unfortunate."

"Don't I know it."

***

My heart is an idiot. 

This is the thought my rational brain will have when it checks back in. For the moment, God alone knows where it went.  I'm on the floor, rocking back and forth screaming into a pillow. There's an Adele album on the radio (I never claimed originality) and even if my face wasn't covered with a pillow, I'd have a hard time breathing.

In a few years, I'll be in a therapist's office, pointing to this exact moment as the moment when I gave up. When I decided that everything was "a whole lot of nothing worth losing or getting back." But that'll be years from now. For the time being I'm screaming into the pillow and trying not to make myself sick.  The truth is, I'm howling over something I should just ohmygodbeoveralready. 

Someone I loved married someone else. 

That's it. 

And let's be clear. He was, objectively, not good for me. We had a deeply unhealthy relationship, and at the end, I didn't even like him very much. But despite not liking him some small part of me still loved him. Very much. And that small part of me (the part I would like to abandon mid-blizzard on the prairie) maybe-always-just-a-little-bit hoped that he'd show up some day and say "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry. I was such an idiot." 

Let's get real. My heart or lizard brain or whatever took over driving during that period of my life was unfathomably stupid. Because every single damn warning sign was there. Peter Pan Syndrome. Indecisiveness. Snobbish taste in books and music. An inability to just return a phone call or text. Aloofness. A million other giant, red-flashing "ACHTUNG" signs. 

But (have I mentioned that my heart is an idiot?) all it took was one smile. One smart comment about a book I was reading. One self-deprecating remark about being so scrawny and I fell inconveniently, irrationally, unwisely in love. 

Idiot.

***

At almost 30 I fall in love a lot less easily than I did in my early 20s. 

It's inevitable, I suppose. You go through bad breakups and not so bad breakups, and you learn how to recognize the reasons why something won't work (emotionally stunted, lives on another continent, gay) and figure out how you're going to isolate all those stupid, swoopy stomach feelings and move on. You learn how to put your guard up. 

Your heart becomes somewhat less of an idiot. 

Until it isn't.

Until someone walks into your life, slips in under your guard, and maybe they don't quite turn your world upside down, but they turn your perception of yourself upside down. Suddenly you're no longer the girl who specializes in unhealthy relationships who is now a little bit crazy because of them, but someone else entirely. Someone who is funny and smart and just a tiny bit desirable. And in the midst of your life feeling very How Stella Got Her Groove Back you think to yourself. "This is a mistake. I'm going to get hurt." 

And you do. You do get hurt because that's what happens. But somehow this time you can walk out of it not saying "My heart is an idiot" but "I am better. In significant, measurable ways."

Hopefully without sounding like a bunny boiler. 

California Dreamin', Minnesota Home

I have a California-themed playlist.

It's employed only to avert Weather Related Madness. Say, for example, it's November 11th-12th and it's suddenly cold enough to be February. February. Or it's snowing in September. Or April. Or it's the sixteenth straight day of subzero temperatures and despite the fact that that you really love Minnesota Jesusgodthisweatheristedious. 

That's when I turn on the California Dreamin' playlist.

It is, if I do say so myself, a good one. A nice mix of the expected (The Mamas and the Papas, Otis Redding) and the slightly more unexpected (Jeffery Focault's cover of "Lodi." Rilo Kiley's "Let Me Back In."). It usually serves to pull me back off the edge. After a listen or two I can set myself back to my normal winter pursuits: building a model whaling ship while listening to Moby Dick, baking, eating my weight in simple carbs, winter running strictly to feel superior.

***

You know the feeling of stepping off a plane and immediately falling in love with a place? Instantly getting vacation high because you're somewhere that's new and interesting and (hello, I live in Minnesota and travel in the winter) warm? God, what a great feeling, having a new city woo you with its jazz clubs and rare bookstores and people who don't elongate their vowels (I discovered this week I can no longer say the word "bars" properly). It's a great feeling, one of my favorite things about travel. But I'm usually happiest at the end of the vacation when, exhausted and completely satisfied, I get back on the plane to come home.

Don't get me wrong. I'll be in New Orleans again this winter. If I had an extra $200.00 in my checking account, I'd be spending Thanksgiving wandering around D.C.. Chicago will always have a special place in my heart. I could rattle around Lower Queen Anne in Seattle on my own for hours. I still have dreams about Beijing and Lima.

But then there are those cities where you deplane and it's just . . . different, somehow.

San Francisco was the closest to love-at-first-sight I've ever been in my life.

It was, I suppose, inevitable. When I boarded my plane in Minneapolis there was a snowstorm bearing down and promises of a foot of snow. In April. When I hopped off the plane in San Francisco it was sunny and sixty-five. BART was, for a girl who was living the middle of a cornfield, surprisingly easy to navigate. I heard live jazz for the first time while I was there. I bought a copy of Howl at City Lights Bookstore (swoon) and then drank too much California wine sitting next to the ocean.

And Redwoods. Oh, my Sweet Jesus. Redwoods.

It was (is) hard to keep from comparing San Francisco to the windswept, icy prairie. Even without the heaps of ice and snow, the thirty-mile an hour wind gusts, the -40 temperatures before windchill, California outstrips Minnesota in one crucial way.

There is nothing sexy about Minnesota.

I love this state with every fiber of my being, but we don't have a whole lot going on here to brag on. Ok, yes, we're usually ranked in the top for healthiest states in the nation. We have decent public education, several Fortune 500 companies, the Mississippi Headwaters, Garrison Keillor, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthplace, but none of those are things that you would travel here to see. Minnesota is, by its very nature, cold, uninviting, and a little standoffish.

California, oh, California. No one once bothered to say "Oh, you aren't from around here, huh?" (Probably because it was crystal clear once you looked at my hair.) No one talked about the weather. I never once heard someone ask "Oh, so how spicy is it?" Everyone was preposterously good-looking, no one looked like they hadn't seen the sun for the past four months, there were bike paths and runners everywhere.

California is, it goes without saying, sexy.

***

I am rubbish at relationships.

There. I finally admitted it. I'm not single because I choose to be. I'm not single because I have anxiety or OCD or because the men in whatever city I'm living in suck. I am single because I am stunningly, breathtakingly awful at relationships. I get nervous during sex. I have a tendency to smush all of my emotions down until I accidentally (and usually inappropriately) blurt them out. Last weekend, I stayed in and read The New Yorker, drank herbal tea, and went to bed before 8pm. I hate making new friends, have never, ever made a good impression on anyone's mother, flatly refuse to introduce men to my parents, and tweak out about ohmygodmyindependence usually around month three.

I am fucking awful at relationships.

I am somehow, impossibly, equally awful at, uh, microrelationships (the ones that last between twelve and fourteen hours). I'm usually convinced someone is a serial killer and even if they pass the Not A Serial Killer Test (Don't ask me. I don't know what it is) I have to contend with the Crushing Former Catholic Guilt and Regret and 9.9999999 times out of 10, I'm reasonably confident it's not going to be worth it (Ugh, neck tattoos, seriously?) and just refuse to even try.

Let's not even get into friendships. I owe everyone who has known me for more than three years a cake, a bottle of wine, and some PTSD counseling.

You know what interpersonal relationships I'm great at? Where I unequivocally shine?

Flings.

Give me something with an expiration date, no shorter than a week and no longer than a month, and I will be the smartest, funniest, sexiest girl a guy has ever been with in his life. I don't like to brag (who am I kidding, I love to brag) but if we don't have longer than 31 days, when I finally drop him at the airport or hop the train back to the Cities, he'll think of me wistfully as the girl who got away. It's because I get a chance to be funny and sweet. I just get to be the good bits of me, the non or charmingly neurotic bits. There's a touch of emotional connection, certainly more than a microrelationship (all right, one night stand) but I don't have to tell him that I work too much, that I have all these wires crossed in my head, that I spend large parts of my day in silence or talk to myself or that I have on more than one occasion let the dirty laundry situation get so out of control that I've gone to buy new underwear rather than go to the laundromat.

Anyway, the girl who got away.

It's true. I've got the love letters to prove it.

That last part is a lie. I did receive love letters (or in one memorable case, a thank you card) but I didn't keep them. Because the thing I love best about flings, the thing that makes me so fucking good at them is the ability to walk away. At the end of the week or two or three I can delete a number from my cell phone, spend two or three days feeling wistful, and then go on with my life, maybe remembering the guy for a breathless moment or two throughout the years.

Flings are sexy.

Trust me, I know exactly how this sounds

***

Commuting to work today in the nearly zero degree temperatures (in November, I ask you) I cued up my California Dreamin’ playlist. And it helped, a little. Mainly it made me think about airline tickets and the fact that my favorite nonprofit on the face of the Earth is located in San Francisco. Also about wine and good chocolate and nearby Redwoods and the North Beach neighborhood. I wondered if Duluth really was a fluke, and if I relocated to a bigger city I could be happy on my own, if I could make friends in a city like San Francisco.

The playlist fades out on The Decemberists's "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade," hands down one of my all-time favorite songs. Before reaching into my pocket to restart the list, I flip my coat collar up and pull my hat down tighter over my ears, cursing the fact that my hair is going to be flat by the time I get to the office. When a new song rather unexpectedly starts I realize I've left myself an Easter egg, a protection against too much wistfulness over something I can't have.

Minnesota isn't sexy. It isn't.  How could it be with so many lefse recipes and so few natural tans? But here's the thing, despite the fact that I had tons of fun in San Francisco, that I think of it and look up plane tickets a few times every year, I haven't been back. I've been to Seattle (twice), Portland, Denver, St. Louis, New Orleans, Boston, and Chicago in the intervening years, but I've never made the trip back to San Francisco. It's a revelation that might sting, but for the Arctic wind that's wormed its way into my heavy coat. I pull off my sweater mittens and reach into my pocket, switching the music over to Trampled by Turtles and already arranging a decidedly unexciting, unsexy, but quietly, reliably, wonderful "My Minnesota Home" playlist in my mind.