I sit down on the sofa and he grins, handing me a large brown envelope. Inside it is – predictably – an enormous Valentine’s Day card. I look at the card, and I feel my tears welling up, because it’s plastered with our gormless running selfies from recent years.
‘This photograph was taken at that hilly half-marathon race in Wales I splutter. ‘And do you remember this one? Running along the seafront in Barcelona.’ Suddenly, I feel a wave of fury as his special Valentine’s Day card taunts me that I can’t do the very thing that I – and we – love to do the most. RUNNING. RUNNING IS HAUNTING ME!
Fucking hell, pull yourself together, Rachel.
‘It’s beautiful, thank you,’ I manage through my heartbreak.
Behind the card is another, smaller envelope. I open it and unfold a typed letter, which I read out loud: an hour’s consultation with an international elite athlete, who – the booking confirmation says – ‘can advise me of any tweaks in my training for the upcoming London Marathon …’
Training? I can’t train! I can’t even run, not a single mile!
I sob again as running seems to have usurped the sweetest and most thoughtful Valentine’s gift and kiboshed it PRECISELY at the time when I least of all need another emotional kicking.
My head’s just about to explode when I find a smidgen of inner strength: Fuck it! I’m not going to let this bloody injury rob me of this. NO WAY! I can speak to this professional sportswoman about some of the times when she’s perhaps struggled with injuries. And she’s an elite athlete, so what the hell must THAT pressure be like?
Almost instantly, my tears dry up and I begin to feel mildly excited. That aside, today is also the day that I threw my running trainers in the bin in a fit of rage after the canal meltdown. My Other Half took them out again, but I’ve got a serious grudge with them, so they quickly went back in and were subsequently buried under a large quantity of cold baked beans.
* * *
I feel slightly less burdened – maybe all the melodrama of yesterday has wiped the emotional slate clean? I’m having difficulty coming to terms with my new normal: my mind is struggling to adapt whilst my body takes some convincing that it will ever want to run again. This is what my new normal looks like:
•6:45 a.m. – I complete my first set of physio rehab exercises on our bedroom floor in the semi-darkness. I notice all the bits of fluff and long blonde hairs on my bedroom carpet, and I now have a perfect view of the various minuscule life forms under our bed. I desperately need to vacuum down here … CHECK!
•8:30 a.m. – We battle through the usual chaotic paraphernalia of our morning school routine, orchestrating one small person into clean pants and a thermal vest. JESUS, HOW HARD CAN IT BE? THERE IS ONLY ONE OF HER, FFS! CHECK!
•8.45 a.m. – I drop one small person at school … and spend twenty minutes completing and signing some legal waiver forms so that she can be given 5ml of Piriton to prevent her having to wear a scratch-averting collar like dogs do when they come out of the vets. CHECK!
•9:15 a.m. – I arrive at work and have already downed copious amounts of coffee before 9:18 a.m. … CHECK!
•12:05 p.m. – I complete my first set of questionable physio rehabilitation exercises on the disgusting mats in the gym at work … eugh! CHECK!
•12:08 p.m. – I briefly pause to wonder if my physio rehab exercises should have taken me longer than three minutes, but even that felt like an hour. MOVE ON, CHECK!
•12:09 p.m. I begin my upright* bike pyramid cardio session. My training consists of a ten-minute easy warm-up, followed by one-, two-, three- and four-minute sets of hard effort, with a minute’s recovery (easy pace) in between sets. It’s a tough workout, and I can smell the evidence of my effort on myself by the end of the session … CHECK!
•1:04 p.m. – I’m back at my desk, having quickly sprayed my armpits and got changed in the thirty-five seconds I have between hopping off the upright bike and needing to respond to my pending emails. Phew! CHECK!
•THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON – I’m feeling reasonably happy with my efforts on the upright bike, and I treat myself to a bag of chocolate peanuts kindly donated by a bemused colleague as I burst back in through the office door, still panting. CHECK!
BUT … But today, I think my left leg feels a tiny bit better. I’m sure it’s not as painful as it has been, and I’m now able to walk and move more freely on it. Granted, I haven’t had any more delusions of running pain-free along the canal, but I’m convinced that it’s beginning to turn the corner, and it feels less acutely painful than it has done for the past couple of weeks. Jesus! Has it only been a few weeks? It seems like an eternity.
Does this mean that I may be heading in the right direction? Maybe not all is lost …
* * *
I feel so buoyed that I decide to go for another test run, knowing my left leg isn’t ready for running yet, but denial is – still – a strange and wonderful thing, and I seem to be stuck in this particular phase of the Kubler-Ross Change Curve. That is, my innate ability to convince myself of an untruth is frightening.
I set off running from work, and it all feels wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I limp along, pushing through the discomfort and I MAKE myself run, once again. I FORCE myself to keep going, even though every ounce of me knows that I’m in the wrong.
Everything around me feels to be spinning, and I can’t stop the panic rising in my chest.
I arrive back at my desk, and I feel empty – like the bottom has just fallen out of my world. HOW CAN I BE ALL RIGHT WITHOUT RUNNING? I’m too afraid of the answer. The expression on my face tells my colleagues all they needed to know: this hasn’t gone well. One of them tries making polite conversation with me. He attempts to crack a joke, but my usual jovial response is entirely absent. It has gone. He and another chatty workmate try again, but my head won’t let me join in. Nothing feels light-hearted. I don’t want to communicate. Not to anyone. Not at all.
* * *
I sit outside the physiotherapy practice in my car, watching the clock until a reasonable time appears on the dashboard: arriving fifteen minutes too early for a half-hour appointment is just about acceptable, thirty minutes too early is not. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Eventually, I head inside. One of Magician Dave’s younger trainees politely asks me how I am, and I respond with my honest, if heavy answer: ‘Not good.’
‘Well, if anyone can sort you out, then Dave can!’ he assures me, brightly.
I sincerely hope he’s right.
Inside the treatment room, Dave puts me through the usual mobility tests: ‘Can you bend this way, and that? Can you reach across, in front, high above and down below?’ The answer is always ‘Yes.’ And then, as I lay face down like a flattened kipper on the physio couch, Magician Dave perches on the corner of the table in front of me.
‘I think a lot of this is a stress response, Rach.’ I prop my chin up on my hands and listen as he gives me his prognosis. ‘I honestly think that this is your body responding to intense, prolonged stress. It’s how you deal with it mentally that’s going to be the key to unlocking all this.’
I know that he’s right: I have been ridiculously stressed, as if permanently on high alert for impending doom. It’s been stealthily creeping up on me for a long time, with self-imposed pressure to live up to a version of myself that I can’t honestly achieve, let alone maintain. And running was becoming a bigger and bigger part of that, with a diary full of races, an iPhone addiction to Strava (a social fitness app commonly used by runners, which tracks running and cycling via GPS and can be used to connect – and compare – routes, distances, courses, races and times with others), where I would monitor my weekly/daily/hourly mileage next to A N Other runner. And I realise in this moment that running has slowly warped into something it was never meant to be for me: a big old shitty stick with which to beat myself. ‘The Power of Yet’ has morphed into ‘The Curse of Enough’.
I’m heartbroken.
And now, my body has had enough. It doesn’t want t
o be beaten up any more. It’s done with the self-flagellation and the unnecessary pressure. ‘Enjoy the journey,’ I’ve heard wiser people say, and I’m beginning to understand what that means. Or, more honestly, I’m identifying with how it feels to simply NOT enjoy the journey at all.
I sit with my elbows propped up on the physio-turned-psychotherapist’s couch, listening to wise old Magician Dave, and every ounce of my being knows that he’s spot on. He advises me to treat the single, most important – and most-vulnerable – part of myself: my head.
I leave my appointment feeling a kind of relief that this inexplicable inability to run has been identified as being a stress-related physical response, and although I go through waves of frustration that a straightforward ‘strain’ or ‘tear’ would be so much easier to handle, I’ve essentially been given the all clear to treat the one crucial factor here: my mental state, and learning how to handle my fears.
Maybe it’s the biggest breakthrough in all of this.
But then, I’m stuck on the Kubler-Ross Change Curve.
Later that day, I head off for another predictably doomed ‘test run’. How many more of these am I going to torture myself with? It’s only a matter of hours since I sat and listened to Magician Dave inform me that my head is the key to all of this. But something hasn’t sunk in yet.
DENY … DENY … DENY …
My leg hurts; it screams. It feels like I’ve deliberately gone and slapped myself in the face with another futile attempt to run when it’s the last thing my body – or my mind – wants to do.
And what the hell is wrong with me? It was only this morning when Magician Dave told me what the problem is.
Why can’t my head process the fact that my body doesn’t want to run?
My mental health is wavering, and I simply don’t know how to be OK without my regular running fix. That’s the truth, although I won’t admit it. Not yet.
* * *
It is the day of my Valentine’s treat, but yet another abandoned run later with my Other Half and I’m in tears.
DENY … DENY … DENY …
‘Maybe I need to go back on Prozac,’ I blurt out, as I wonder desperately how my mind can cope with my body’s refusal to run. ‘I don’t know if I can be OK with all the chaos running riot in my mind without being able to run,’ I plead, almost confirming my conclusion that this is surely the most obvious step towards me finding a mentally safe place again.
So, I do what I hoped I wouldn’t have to: I book an appointment with my doctor, but am told that the next available appointment is in a month’s time.
NOOOOOO! I CAN’T WAIT THAT LONG!
‘It’s just that – well – I’m in a bit of a bad place,’ I say to the receptionist, gulping hard as tears stream down my face, ‘and I really need to see the doctor.’ Already I can hear my voice crumbling as I sit opposite him in his treatment room, declaring, ‘I’m not fixed, Dr Taylor (sob). I honestly thought that I was (sob), but quite clearly, I’m not.’
I’m hurtling towards a mental health black hole. I’m really, seriously struggling to cope.
Back in the car, I sit quietly in the passenger seat as my OH focuses on getting me to my Valentine’s Day ‘treat’.
‘Are you nervous?’ he asks, no doubt misinterpreting my silence for apprehension.
‘No, not at all,’ I reply, flatly. That’s how I feel. Flat. Lacking in any emotion. I’m not excited, or nervous, or pondering over what I’ll say, or what she will ask – I simply feel nothing.
I’m a nauseating cocktail of anxious, sad, confused and vulnerable as I sit down on the couch opposite the athlete. I try to calm down and appear ‘normal’, but I know it’s not working. Instead, I sound like Spud from Trainspotting, only I haven’t taken any speed.
Running Guru seems rather nonchalant and gives the impression of being a steely-eyed, no-nonsense elite training machine, although I wonder if that’s just a reflection of my current dark mood. Regardless, I try hard to sound chirpier and more positive than I feel, and to counter any ‘negative vibes’ I may be emitting in her general direction.
She speaks matter-of-factly about possible training sessions whilst I’m unable to run, but her heart isn’t in it. She doesn’t know that I could literally burst into tears at any given moment, or that I feel dead inside. Finally, our torturous hour is up and, in fairness, she’s done her job. I’ve taken the following from our exchange:
•It is quite possible to have a ‘Training Plan B’ for when it’s unfeasible for me to run. THIS IS A VERY GOOD THING. I decide to take this as an opportunity to try out new activities, and to train in a new way. But it sounds so fucking logical and sensible, and I know that I’m neither of those things;
•She suggests that I try aqua jogging. WTAF?! I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I might be sitting here contemplating buying a buoyancy belt and underwater trainers with a view to jogging on the spot in the deep end of Sowerby Bridge swimming pool, but it’s happening;
•That there is a practical, non-emotive way around my current predicament. Maybe the fact that she was so poker-faced about it all was good for me. Perhaps she inadvertently pulled me back from needing a virtual teary cuddle to thinking more practically about what I can do in my current circumstances.
__________
* This may not seem like a big deal to you, but up to now I have only used the recumbent gym bike, so this is exciting news in my world (although both are about as much fun as licking the inside of a bus window!).
8
HELP ARRIVES
I feel like I’m no longer an active or relevant part of the community who are likely to understand me the most. I’m standing on the sidelines of the running community, looking in on a world of marathon training progression, post-race selfies, mini ‘yay!’ moments and personal victories.
That used to be me.
I feel isolated, and like I’ve lost a part of my identity: possibly the biggest part. But strangely enough, it is here – on the Internet – where I’m also looking for answers.
I scroll through Twitter and actively ignore any hashtag relating to the 2017 Virgin London Marathon, choosing not to torture myself. Instead, I’m interested in the ‘other’ stories. I want to hear about recovery from this place, and I want to know that it is possible. My legal training kicks in, and suddenly I’m on a mission to gather evidence that I can – that I will – make my way back from here. It simply must be possible.
Then I see it: an email about the BDD study I applied to take part in just a few days ago.
I am emailing to inform you that, having discussed your case at some length with the team, we have decided to accept you onto the BDD therapy study.
I am completely stunned. I have absolutely no idea what just happened, or what lies ahead. But this is big news. It is big news for two reasons: first, it means that I have now – finally – been diagnosed with suffering from body dysmorphia. Possibly twenty years too late, but the confirmation comes as a relief of sorts. I’m given the results from my BDD video assessment and I’m told by Dr G that I have a score of 24 on what he describes as ‘the Y-Box scale’ but, when I Google-search it later, is actually called the ‘Y-BOCS scale’. This, he says, is the gold standard for diagnosing and assessing the severity of body dysmorphia. The scale ranges from 0 (i.e. zero evidence of BDD) through to the most severe cases, which come out with a whopping 40. My score of 24 is categorised within the ‘moderate-to-severe’ range. I’m only grateful to not be blighted with a higher score than this: the horror of living with a significantly worse form of this exhausting and damaging mental health illness is difficult to imagine. But at least I know, now, that I haven’t imagined all this, it wasn’t some fanciful, cut-and-paste label I conveniently adopted to stick onto my insecurities: BDD is real, it exists and I’m done with suffering from it. My self-diagnosis has been verified.
Second, this is big news because it means that I now have the best opportunity I’ve ever had to receive tre
atment and finally get some help with taming this beast. This will be my first experience of undergoing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and I’m excited by the prospect that I may be able to deal with my mental health difficulties without the need for medication – or running.
* * *
It’s the start of a brand-new week, and my twelve-week online BDD therapy programme begins.
I’ve a call scheduled with Dr G, during which he will talk me through the ‘online platform’ and how I will work through the various sections by myself over the coming months. I’m relieved that I won’t have regular video calls (because they are both exhausting and intense) although I understand that we will need to have intermittent reviews throughout the course of the programme, which I can just about cope with.
I’m once again ready for my video chat with Dr G. Just like before, I’m immediately put off by the sight of my own seemingly contorted face bobbing about in a small square on my MacBook screen.
FFS! How shiny is my chin?!
I am momentarily horrified, but for now, there are more pressing matters.
Dr G talks me through the eight modules that form the therapy programme.
‘… And to the right, you’ll find the worksheets for all the modules, together with your BDD diary,’ he continues. ‘These will be the basis of your practical tasks, and it is very important that you fill these out on a WEEKLY BASIS – sometimes, daily.’
Practical tasks? Worksheets? A BDD diary? And, finally, homework assignments? I can feel my sixteen-year-old petulant self re-emerge after years of lying dormant, happily undisturbed. Shit! I will be accountable to someone! My mind races, grappling with the reality of undergoing this treatment: Dr G will be monitoring my progress. He will know my most embarrassing, awkward BDD thoughts, and I will have to face talking to him on my MacBook Pro with that knowledge! I feel a tiny shudder of anxiety rumble across my body and I now have goosebumps on my arms. But what did I expect? Did I really think that this would be a ‘read-only’ exercise and that I could once again get away with being invisible?
A Midlife Cyclist Page 6