Why I can't do macrame just yet.

My Dad was asking me why I push myself so hard and my mom called me today saying I do too much and she is concerned about me.   I must admit at the moment my anxiety is a little like a veld fire on a hot and windy day, out of control and sucking all the air from the atmosphere to fuel it, hot and wild.

Ideally I should be the person who stays home most days enjoying my alone time, reading a little.  Taking time to cook dinner, grocery shop, walk my dog Lucy and just be.  I should do gentle exercise like yoga and hang with other mothers on coffee dates.  It would help my anxiety and subsequently help my mouth which obviously reacts to stress and fatigue.  

Somehow I just can’t.  I have had a shit past 5 plus years which was beyond my control and I have also had far too many friends and siblings of friends die way before their time.   They are gone.  Gone.  They have no more choice with what to do with their life, they have no life.  How can this be?  I still can’t wrap my head around it and the latest one was a tough one as my friend Bee was convinced she was not going to die.  We pretended along with her.  We had this joke where she decided her name would not be Bee Peggy (peg as in die) so I called her Bee Zoe.  Zoe means life.  I even have her name saved on my phone as Bee Zoe.  Part of why I live my life hard is because we just don’t know how much time we have on earth.  I don’t want regrets.  We also don’t know how we will age and when I am an old lady, I can THEN walk my dog and do yoga and cook dinners and meet girlfriends.  I will have the time and I won’t have the strength and energy I have now. 

I love having goals that scare the crap out of me.  Part of me is drawn to that veld fire adding fuel like this 21km I am running on Sat.  I am really nervous for it.  It would be incredibly easy not to pitch up but I want that…I have frikkin’ done it feeling.  I have just done something for the very first time at age 43 that was hard and needed bravery and hard work and determination.  I know it’s not Comrades or 2 Oceans but for me, it’s huge.   It has taken me 16 months to get from I hate running I can’t run 5 meters and never will, to, I am about to do my first half marathon.  Do you get me? Entering for  70.3 Ironman makes me want to puke it’s so scary.  What the hell am I thinking?  Training for the Olympic distance Tri was hard enough.  This time more than double the distance for each discipline.  We start in August and I have enjoyed not training since April 26^th.  Not being so exhausted.   Odd thing is I still run 3 timed a week, swim twice and do one spin class but that is considered not training compared to what is up ahead for me.  Yoh yoh yoh!!!

The studying is really not good for my Dystonia and I have added some new tricks to tongue spasms and palate spasms.  Lots of blowing into my sleeve or arm, face scrunching, jaw clenching.  I think the latest meds kicked me up a notch on the Dystonia scale.  I have to be so careful not to let it consume my life, my spirit and my joy.   For anyone who has a chronic debilitating conditioning they will understand how you fight.  You refuse to succumb.  Training so hard, studying so hard, I am in control.  Me.  I can stop at any time.   When it’s pissing with rain and the wind is howling and we are on a training run its hard but I can just stop whenever I want to.  My Dystonia, I have no control.  I am a puppet jerked 24/7 with no respite.

So that is why I train so hard, push and push some more.  To honour my friends who died too soon.  To have the rush of achieving goals I never thought I could.  To keep my head above water when my Dystonia wants to claim my life by dragging me under where it’s dark and murky.   I understand it’s not sustainable and I have to balance it out and keep perspective and I do, I will and I am.  My new schedule (Typed up today till Nov colour coded = Agatha calmed down) has a day off written in for 2 of the months until my next exams.  I am also only working 2 of the 5 days during school holidays and no weekend so I have 3 weeks of chill time.  I will read, go for long bike rides, bake, hang with my kids and chill.  I really will and then August  its training time with lots of exciting heart racey triathlons and half marathons before the biggie next Jan.  After 70.3 Triathlon next year I am pretty sure I will not do another.  If I want to finish my degree by the end of 2016 I have to do 8 modules next year and the full 10 in 2016.  You don’t believe me do you?  Really, just this one big bucket list triathlon and then I will be a sensible 43 year old normal person with my midlife crises over.  Promise.