Apologies that it has once again been a little while since my last post. For personal reasons, I have needed to take a break away from the whole social media thing. You see, if the truth is to be told, 2016 left me feeling somewhat broken. Hopefully, I am now back in the flow and can keep the posts coming into 2017.
With 2016 now in the bag, it is time for a little reflection on the year as a whole. Time to pull together the take-away lessons from the year, and give it a balanced review. Can a year have a 'personality'? If so, is it then possible for it to have a personality disorder, or even a mental illness? Because, looking back, 2016 seemed a little unhinged... possibly psychotic... or maybe in need of a little medication? You see, on the running front it has been a real humdinger of a year. I set out with the intention of running 2016 miles for the year and taking in 16 runs of marathon distance and beyond. Mission accomplished on all fronts there. The 2016 miles were all done by 13th December, and all the runs were in the bag by mid-September! Along the way, I forged some fabulous new and interesting friendships, moved on from a friendship or two, learned a few lessons regarding my training and racing, came close to breaking myself on one occasion, broke myself (or at least the odd metatarsal or two) on one occasion, and developed an interest in obstacle course racing which has set the agenda for 2017! Not really a bad year by all accounts. But then, personally, it has been a really tough year. My father's health had started to deteriorate back in 2015 and we feared that maybe he had another cancer (he had had bladder cancer for 20 years or so, but that was managed well and we had always been told that he was likely to die with it, not from it). He was then diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. (PF) This wasn't a disease we knew anything about as a family but the long and short of it was that his lungs gradually stopped absorbing oxygen. There is currently no 'treatment' or cure for PF – just palliative care, and the prognosis is poor at best. We couldn't help feeling that a Big C diagnosis may have been an easier option! He became less and less able to do day-to-day things, eventually requiring supplementary oxygen, first for when he was active, and then even at rest. My dear Mum became his 24-hour-a-day carer. Over this summer and autumn, we watched as he slowly withdrew from us, and became disinterested in life, getting physically weaker by the day and week. He was eventually taken from us on 22nd November and his funeral was on 12th December. Throughout Dad's illness, as through so many other difficult times, running was a constant companion. I found the escape of grinding out the daily miles comforting, giving me time to reflect and clear my head. I could rage at the world, shed the odd tear, run through conversations in my head and come home a little calmer. Another of those great things running has given me is a couple of truly fabulous close friendships. Whilst many friends really weren't sure how to relate to me during Dad's illness and subsequent to his death, a couple of my (running) friends have truly been a source of particular comfort. Having both experienced similar losses, they were both perfectly poised on the sidelines, ready to hold my broken pieces whilst I floundered. Neither of them tried to 'fix' me, or offered me bare platitudes, they were just solidly 'there' when I needed them. I am truly, truly grateful for their friendship and support and will be forever in their debt for their kindness. I am afraid that all other friendships have very much been put on the back boiler. My sincere apologies to those affected. I simply haven't got the spare emotional energy to support anyone else right now. Hopefully, in time, I will be able to get back out there again and reconnect with those patient enough to wait for me to heal a little. My relationship with social media has also rather suffered during this time. Facing the certain and imminent death of a loved one certainly helps to put things into perspective and as the year progressed, I started to find a lot of my friends and connections' social media posts somewhat shallow and banale. Truth to be told, they were probably no different to normal, and the same kind of posts I myself would normally put up, but I just couldn't deal with them any more. I stepped away from regularly checking my feed, and even unfollowed some friends whose posts were particularly troubling me (although I am sure this was probably my issue, not anything to do with said friends and their posts at all). Following Dad's death, with 2016 rounding out with the loss of a few more celebrity names, Facebook in particular was awash with public cries of sorrow and sadness at the loss of these stars. Surely, I cannot be the only one who has suffered a personal loss in 2016 to feel ... what exactly...? Anger, I guess, at people's outpourings of 'sorrow' at the death of a star who they did not personally know and whose death would not actually affect their day-to-day lives at all. I guess I never have been a subscriber to the whole Hello! Magazine culture and maybe that is part of the problem...? Whatever the cause, it has left me with a somewhat tainted relationship with Facebook in particular. My decision going forward is that I will no longer regularly check my feed and will be taking a break from actively posting on my wall. These blog posts will continue to appear on my feed, but that may be as much as Facebook gets from me for a while, at least until my head is perhaps in a better place. All this said, I am truly looking forward to 2017. In terms of what I have already got planned, it looks set to be a truly epic year. As an added bonus, I have some fabulous company for every event this year, so I am in no way going it alone. Bring it on and let the healing commence!
1 Comment
|
All content of this site copyright of Luan Wall unless otherwise credited.
..........................................
Archives
November 2018
Categories |