Hard to believe it has been almost exactly a year since I seriously started tracking my running. 1000 miles later it feels pretty damn good. And I sure could use that today. Session was a good one but deeply moving and painful. It hung on me driving home and I couldn’t shake it. Thankfully it was a beautiful day. I rode in the sunshine. When that didn’t work I got on the bike and rode amongst the golden hues of mowed hay fields. I knew I was closing in on 1000, but it still a nice surprise.

So what of those long minutes contemplating life and fate this morning? I think there is a place for those conversations. It is important to explore the very real and painful reality that it is hard to keep looking around at the growth I have found without looking back, looking sideways, looking up, looking anywhere but where I am now. It is too easy to get lost in those searches for any evidence that this isn’t what it seems. that this isn’t really me. I can go long stretches these days where I pretend that this can just go on indefinitely. But those stretches don’t ever last. They are replaced by the worry. The what ifs. The what now. What next. It becomes a loop. I find solace and comfort in that loop. My partner bitches about my endless worrying, but what she doesn’t realize is it is just a distraction. A distraction from the real elephant in the room. I know that bone crushing depression will come back. Don’t know when and that may be the hardest thing of all. It isn’t fate it is reality. But yes, in the long run it is indeed my path. There is no getting off this ride. There is a part of me that accepts completely that I will die. It is indeed inevitable. I have spent much of the last 20 years convinced that death would be at my hand. Am I still convinced? That is a difficult question. But as Beatrice saw today it leaves me sad and conflicted as I step onward on this path of healing and growth while still clinging to an old soothing touchstone.