Of Skull-squeezing and Maturity

I ran down the street this morning trying to convince myself that I wanted to run.  I didn’t want to run, but I was doing it anyway.  I had a perfectly reasonable argument about why it would have been better to sleep an extra forty-five minutes.  On this morning, like the past several mornings of running, a song popped into my head.  “That’s How People Grow Up” by Morrissey, delivered with irony, but true nonetheless.  Maturity may represent those moments when we do things even though we don’t want to.  

That sounds more skeptical than I mean it to sound.  I was really pondering self-reliance at the moment the song came to me.  I was considering whether I could rely upon myself to take care of myself.  A blog post yesterday by Jamie Ridler inspired the rumination.  A number of different people rely upon me to do things in any given day.  My children, my partner, other family, friends, teachers, neighbors.  I think I’m fairly trustworthy.  But it has often been the case that I sacrifice my own personal goals and intentions in order to fulfill the needs of others.  This is natural for me, and to a certain extent necessary, as a fully-functioning member of a family and society, but it grates upon me sometimes.  

Another song often occurs to me in those moments of frustration with the world and myself, also Morrissey, singing “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” delivered with the charming aplomb of the chronic depressive putting on a good show.  

I’ve heard some people say, skeptically, that if you don’t take care of yourself no one will.  I don’t completely agree with this sentiment, but it is true for my personal goals and intentions.  If I don’t run, no one will run for me (and what good would that do?).  If I don’t run, no one will force me to run (and I’d resent it if they did).  I could substitute other intentions for running: writing, updating this website, thinking.  If I can’t trust myself to take care of myself physically and emotionally, that could at some point undermine other people’s trust in me. 

So when Morrissey chides me about maturity, I can take it.  Lately I’ve motivated myself with the idea that the morning run is to scrub and tighten.  I scrub out my asthmatic lungs and the fog from my brain.  I tighten up my bones and heart and will.  When I think that way, the skull-squeezing lessens, and so does fear in all of its insidious permutations (Will my work be good enough? Will someone jump out from behind that bush and harm me?)  

I’ve written before that I was inspired to return to running by Haruki Murakami’s memoir about running.  When Murakami talks about running, it is both literal running, and a metaphor for what he can accomplish in himself, and what limits him.  When I talk about running, I am staking out a space in my life for self-reliance.  I can and will take care of myself, physically and mentally.  Don’t ever doubt that running is just as much about my mental health as it is about my physical health.  When my life is frustrating, or the skull-squeezing starts, I run away.  I run away just long enough for the endorphins to kick in, and then I can run back, confident that I can handle anything that comes along because I have taken care of myself.  

When the endorphins kicked in this morning, I did enjoy myself.  Being prickled by maturity is perhaps a good thing.  It’s when I’m prickled by the skull-squeezing that I know it’s time to run.