Failure is a victory
The universe has obviously been trying to teach me something this year. I clearly hadn’t been getting the message because uncontrollable obstacles kept getting in the way of my plans. Three weather cancellations of races? Getting Covid en route to a race even though I was masked on the plane the whole time? Having my menstrual cycle sync up to race week in the worst possible way? All things I cannot control. And I have resisted. Fought the water and lost time and time again. The more things went sideways the harder I fought to double down on the same path. I tried the same thing over and over again and expected a different result. I did not choose acceptance. I did not learn how to float. I have tried to use my grit, resilience and determination to power through. But I realized before Leadville 100, that I was not using these tools out of compassion for myself. I was using them out of insecurity. As mentioned in my pre-race post, I have been through an incredible amount in the last 12 months and yet very seldom have I allowed myself to be gentle with myself, to be kind, to absorb the enormity of all that has happened. I gaslighted myself every day internalize the message that “I am fine” and none of this is a big deal. Yeah, totally not a big deal that a few hours after winning Javelina last year I was taking chemotherapy drugs. Totally normal and no big deal. I wasn’t processing everything because I was just trying to survive.
And so, the universe took the wheel and drove. And drove and drove until I finally stopped to consider what the actual fuck I was doing. What I have always done. Survived through sheer white-knuckling and will. Through the years and all of my trauma, I have developed some exceptional survival techniques. I have some “personality” characteristics that have been finely honed through pain and suffering. The problem is when your habitual way of existing is born out of trauma and adverse experiences is that you often can’t see that these things are maladaptive. These ways of being are hugely successful in the eyes of your body, because you survived. But they fail gravely when it comes to actually living a healthy, stable life. I have lived in a state of high alert my whole life. And for most of my adult life, I prided myself on how good I was at dealing with adversity (because I am). But I also never considered the toll these survival techniques were having.
When I started somatic therapy a few years ago, I felt like I was pulling on a tiny thread. I started processing things in tiny, tiny bites. But last week, when I was doing EFT, a different somatic technique, I realized that in my therapy, I had also been avoiding confrontation with my deepest pains and most uncomfortable truths. My whole identity was built on being ok and I realized, even in therapy, I was not allowing myself to not be. I did not want to confront what I did not want to feel: how badly I have treated myself and how poorly I think about myself. Inception at its finest, I truly internalized my abusers and the people that have hurt me. You can’t hurt me, if I can get there first. If I don’t believe in my own worthiness and lovability, then when I don’t receive love, it can’t hurt me. If I am so hyper-independent that I drive myself to the emergency room and never want to bother anyone by needing help, when people don’t show up for me, it won’t crush me like it did in the past. Over the years, I have, somewhat unknowingly, chose resistance, not radical acceptance.
When I started pulling on the thread in therapy, I genuinely did want to change- to stop surviving and start living, to stop operating habitually out of traumatic coping mechanisms and start genuinely caring for myself. But it is hard and scary to do that. Sometimes, oftentimes, it feels safer to stay in the pain you know.
Something shifted for me last week though. The universe brought me a lesson, once again, and race week was a shit show. I had an injury appear out of no where and I felt like crap. I floundered, I stressed, I resisted. But something happened when I wrote my pre-Leadville post, something changed. I hit publish and suddenly, I felt different. I let go, I stopped trying to control the uncontrollable and I very abruptly felt extremely calm and at peace.
When I went to packet pickup and was handed Bib #1, I did not feel pressure or worry or imposter syndrome. Instead, I felt honored and respected. I did not feel like I had to prove myself because of it, instead I let myself feel pride in everything I have already accomplished. When the gun went off and it became clear that whatever weird injury had sprung out of no where was not going to allow me to complete the distance, I did not meet it with resistance. I let myself feel the disappointment, but also showed myself so much dignity and grace. I took care of myself in that moment and did what was right for my future self. I did not let my ego scream “but we are winning” and force me onwards for no reason. For once, I truly did not feel at all self-conscious in my decision to stop. I had chosen not to just survive, I had chosen not to hustle for my worthiness, I had chosen not to be insecure. I felt the fleeting disappointment at bad luck, I cried my tears of frustration. But I also, not once, made dropping out of Leadville at mile 27, anything other than an act of self-care. I actually feel immense pride in my choice because it can be really easy in the sport of ultrarunning to internalize the message that we should push through anything at all costs. But there is always a cost. It takes confidence to walk away from something you have worked and fought for. It take confidence to say, '“no this doesn’t serve me”. It finally dawned on me that I do not need to continually prove myself, because it is already established to be true that I am an excellent runner. What I realized that I also wanted to be true, what I also wanted to believe: that I am a worthy, that I deserve love and care from myself, and that good day or bad day, I am ok. I have been fighting a battle that no one can see my whole life and it is time to stop fighting. It is time to take a different path and approach. “Failure” at Leadville was actually a real victory for me- no more trying to resist the universe, no more trying to control the uncontrollable, no more fighting the water. I feel a shift inside and I am ready to walk this different path of being.