I Have Lost to February

It’s the last day of February. A short month, but this one has been rough for me. I’ve been ruminating over this post for a few days. I did a January recap and still want to do one for February, but it’s not positive. The title of this post comes from a Dar Williams song that feels eerily appropriate. My other quote for the month is “Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone” from the famous Joni Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi”.

For me this refers to two events that have happened this month. I’ll start with the health because this blog focuses on wellness. In my recent post “Setbacks” I wrote about a foot pain that was nagging. I went outside to run for the first time in almost a week. It was cold and raining. I didn’t care, I was thrilled to be outside and running. After about a half mile the pain came back. This means no 10K tomorrow and that I’ll miss meeting one of my running goals for the year. I also have a half marathon scheduled on March 23rd and am hoping to not miss that goal too. I was wishing for this to easily resolve itself, but I bit the bullet yesterday and decided to contact an orthopedic doctor. I have an appointment today.

I was so devastated yesterday morning after my run attempt. Running has become such an important part of my life, and not having it has been especially challenging due to the other development that’s come about this month. My partner of over 11 years and I have decided to split up. We met three weeks before my 18th birthday, and started dating a week after we met. We moved in together in August 2003. We were always the type of couple that people envied. I genuinely thought that we’d be together for our whole lives.

I have committed to being honest on this blog, so I felt weird not writing about this. This has been coming for a long time but I think we were both holding on because it felt too scary not to. She’s still my best friend and I can’t imagine not being in each other’s lives. There was a sense of urgency in our split because we had to notify our leasing company if we wanted to renew our lease by the end of this month. Oh, February.

I have decided to stay in our current house, and have a friend moving in. She is still looking for a place to live, and that place may not be in Orlando. I moved into our guest room two weekends ago. It has been extremely difficult to continue living a healthy, balanced lifestyle in the midst of this. I have experienced depression, anger, anxiety, and a host of other negative emotions. I love to exercise, so that hasn't been as much as a problem (until the foot issue – really awful timing), but eating is my weakness.

My strategy to cope with the desire to eat unhealthy foods is to try to find a healthy substitute for each craving. Fortunately, I don’t keep much unhealthy food in the house. I also engage in a lot of self talk and mindfulness. I ask myself why I crave a thing, how much pleasure I’ll really get from it, and what impact it will have in the long term. This has helped, but is clearly hard ass work. I am ready for March and hope for good news at the doctor today. Creative suggestions for exercise that don’t put pressure on my foot are much appreciated. Also, if any of you have gone through a divorce/separation I’d love to hear from you about how you got through.