when it rains it pours... otherwise known as a rolled ankle

gah... so after my last post about how i NEED running to be sane i went out and ran again that sunday because well... everything felt great!  the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, my smile was a mile wide, and basically rainbows were shooting out of my ass.

then it all came crashing down.

i was about 1.5 miles from home on a beautiful trail that runs along the river and i rolled my right ankle.  i crumpled to the ground as the sky did indeed fall all around me.  i laid there in the mud for a little bit chanting the mantra "please don't be broken, please don't be broken, please don't be broken" over and over again through tears.

then i took a breath and reasoned with myself that if i could stand on then it wasn't broken. 
so i bore weight and... i could stand on it.

then i reasoned that if i could walk on it (in spite of the instant swelling just above my shoe line) that it wasn't broken. 
so i took a few steps and... i could walk.

then i convinced myself that if i could run on it then there's absolutely no way it's broken.
so i ran home.

while it hurt a little it didn't hurt like i expected a break to feel.  i've broken another bone before (shattered my right wrist in 2007) and just now i'm remembering that it didn't hurt at all for about 2 hours.  then hole-e-shit it hurt SO MUCH!  well... i ran home and it didn't really hurt and i figured that if it was broken there was no way i would be able to do that.

when i got home i asked my husband to look at it and judging from his reaction... i guess i should have called him to come get me.

as soon as i took the shoe off my whole ankle swelled up like a balloon.  i basically took a shower and then sat on the couch with ice the whole rest of the day.  then on monday i went to the doc and she had a little looksee and told me that it wasn't broken but very badly sprained.

*sigh*

being that i'm not feeling all that mentally stable right now this felt like the end of the world for a hot minute.  then i dusted off my brain and took a breath. 

the nurse said 4-6 weeks but i'm not in a boot so that's something.  my ankle was so swollen the first 1/2 of this week that i couldn't get a real shoe on my foot.  today it's still swollen (6 days later) but at least i can see my ankle bones now.  before it was cankle city!

there's a pretty impressive bruise that goes from just above my ankle bone on the outside all the way along the whole base of my foot and ends just before the pinkie toe begins.  mostly the bruise hurts but the foot/ankle... not so much. 

guess 2019 is really going out with a bang.

winter blues... its a thing.

so i got a stupid shin splint in my stupid right shin back in september and i ran through it like a dummy because i had a race coming up that i love and wanted to do well in.  after the race... well, i've been running sporadically at best.

i averaged 1 run a week for 5 weeks in a row and then i felt pretty good so i ran 3 times the week of 10/21-10/27 and then my shin started talking to me the morning after the 3rd run.  no pain but i could feel whatever it is in the shin that is a shin splint... ligament, muscle, whatever hurts.  i'm too lazy to look it up right now so you'll have to use your own google skills on this one.  so i decided that day that i would wait until december 1st to run again.

guess how long that lasted?

until today.

i ran today.  i NEEDED to run today.  it got really cold, dreary, and freaking snowed on halloween so i've been less than good this week.  i've been borderline depressed and just full of unease and malcontent.  i NEEDED to run.  so i taped my shin, hoped for the best, and ran 3 miles.  it was a glorious 3 miles.  it is beautiful outside and the air smells amazing and the wind on my skin was amazing and my labored breathing was amazing and my working muscles were amazing and everything about it was amazing.

which brings me to what people like to call seasonal affective disorder.  apparently, it IS a thing.  so i wonder how it correlates with your run of the mill all the time depression? 

my family has a history of mental illness and depression.  how this has passed on to me is in the form of manic depressive disorder and deep depressive states.  running has all but cured this garbage from my brain.  when i run regularly i have very few if not non-existent episodes of wildly varying mood swings.  my moods are stabilized by regular running.  my highs are (seemingly) normal and my lows are (seemingly) normal.  i have not been medicated in many many years thanks to running.

so how do i balance my brain if i cannot run?  i also have a bit of an obsessive/compulsive issue as well and when i switched my focus to running this has proven to be alternately a bonus to my running and a detriment.  it is a detriment because i can't not run.  i have run through injury after injury.  i get really paranoid when i don't get to run regularly about my fitness and weight gain.  i get really in my head about these things to the point of obsession.  i begin to obsess about the foods i put in my body and how much.  when i get to run regularly i do not obsess about any of these things.  i eat healthy and what i want.  i don't restrict my diet when i run and i honestly do not think about food at all other than when i'm hungry i eat it.

i NEED to run.  i NEED to run weekly.  i NEED it to function properly in this world.  it reduces my stress to nil.  it makes me feel good.  it gives me something to do that allows me to see the beauty in my life, and appreciate all that i have going for me.  it makes me a better wife, mother, and friend.  it allows me to see that nothing in my life is a chicken little sky is falling issue.  before running my life was very dramatic.  my brain was very dramatic.  everything was life or death... and living with that sort of stress in one's brain is really really hard to do. 

today i am calm.  i am positive.  i am freaking happy.

this is because i run.

so... i am panicking about this stupid shin splint and the amount of time i will have to wait for it to go away so that i can not die.  see... dramatic as hell is my brain off running.  lol!

in all seriousness tho' i'm losing it.  i need to run and am so grateful that my body allowed me to do it today.  once a week is not enough tho' so i hope that i can pepper it through every other day or something right now... we will see.

i post this (for one) because i want you to know that you are not alone. 
i post this (for two) because i want you to know that it's ok to have mental illness
i post this (for three) because i want you to know that there is nothing wrong with you if you too have a mental illness

i don't really talk about this garbage ever because i don't want anyone to look at me with pity or in a different way because my brain works differently.  i don't want to be viewed as weaker or broken because of my brain.  i went many years believing that i was broken and that something was wrong with me, and even tho' i KNOW that there isn't anything wrong with me... i still need to maintain the things that help keep my brain in check and KNOWING that i need to do these things is important in keeping nothing wrong with me.  i hope that makes sense.

right now i feel a little panicky and just needed to put it down somewhere.  lastly, today's short run was the best and i'm so glad i did it.