More Than Running…

The Worm of Doubt

Posted on September 21, 2012. Filed under: Running | Tags: #mind body connection, #running, #sprint tri, #sprint triathlon, balance, challenge, change, character, goals, half marathon, health, inspiration, mental discipline, mental-health, mind/body connection, morethanrunning, running, self discipline, sprint, triathlon |

This morning we lost Jingle Ball in a freak incident.

My dogs and I were trying to get back into our usual routine:  Wake up, pour coffee, sit on floor, throw Jingle Ball across the almost-empty dining room, through the kitchen and against the far wall.  Sip coffee while one of the dogs runs back with the ball, the other following.

Jingle Ball is not exactly aptly named. It is my dogs’ first ball, turning 11 years old this month.  It’s more like a half moon than a ball, the once bright green rubber faded mostly to a dingy brown, its surface dented and scratched.  The jingle bell for which it’s named disappeared years ago.  Still, my dogs love it; it’s the first and often only toy they choose from their overflowing box any time they want to play.

This morning it disappeared into a hole underneath a cupboard.  Not a visible hole, but a hole I didn’t even know existed.  Part of the design where two cupboards meet in a corner.  You can’t even see it until you’re lying flat on your back staring above the molding along the floor. I threw the ball straight and hard, but rather than going straight, it bounced sideways on its jagged half moon edge and disappeared through the phantom hole.

It took a few moments to comprehend what happened.  Once I understood, I panicked.  How were we going to get a ball out of a space whose entry I could barely get my arm through?  We had to get it. So I shoved my arm through the hole up to the elbow, twisted and turned it in an attempt to feel around.  When that didn’t work I opened drawers and closets to find whatever tool might help.  A wire hanger. Salad tongs.

Fruitless. After 40 minutes of trying, I was overcome with despair and I sat on the floor and cried.

Despair has pervaded my life over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been penetrated by that insidious worm of doubt that bores holes through the good in life and renders it unstable.

I can’t really say what initiated it, but I can see its effect.  I’ve stopped writing.  Have taken to lying in bed most mornings staring at the ceiling, willing myself to get up.  Wondering what my purpose truly is and if what I am doing really makes a dent in the world.

This week, I even stopped running.

I should have seen that coming. Writing and running are so alike. The principles that apply to one apply to the other.

It sneaks up on you, this worm of self-doubt. Others don’t really know it’s there. To them, you appear a shiny apple on the outside. But they can’t see what’s eating you.  Often, neither can you.  It wasn’t until my boyfriend called one morning that I really noticed how much it affected me, and that I had stopped running.  When he asked how my run was I told him it wasn’t, I had decided to lie in bed instead. Couldn’t think of a good enough reason to get out.  He was silent for a moment and said, But isn’t that why you run? To give you purpose and make everything clear?

Today I attended a volunteer fair at a local university.   I smiled and chatted and took down lots of names.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about Jingle Ball, stuck there in a dark corner I hadn’t even known existed.  I worried that I wouldn’t get it out. That my dogs would be sad.  That it would be stuck in a deep, dark hole, just out of reach, forever.

A woman at the fair asked how Girls on the Run started, and I launched into the organization’s history.  I told her about the founder, Molly Barker—how even though she had done extraordinary things with her life she struggled with self-doubt, but one day while out running something clicked.  She saw with great clarity the relationship between running and self-confidence and Girls on the Run was born.

Midway through, I teared up.  I suddenly saw where I was:  Stuck in a hole I had no idea existed.

I left the fair a little early and came straight home, determined to find Jingle Ball, not for my dogs but for me.  I lay flat on my back on the floor, grabbed a pair of salad tongs, and stuck my arm in the hole as far as it would go.  I closed my eyes and felt around the space, leading my hand not by sight but by faith.  After nearly half an hour and a bruised and scratched arm, I found Jingle Ball, guided it safely to the entry, and gently eased it out of the hole.

My dogs and I danced around the kitchen in celebration, their half moon, jagged-edged, dirty, pock-marked ball returned.  Their ball, my hope.

Tomorrow I will cover the hole with duct tape.  And then I will run.

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