This too shall pass.

I would be lying if I say I am doing fine. I am not fine. I don't feel fine. I feel completely lost. I have not run for 36 days and it is driving me up the walls. My head is overflowing with noise and I can't seem to filter through the screaming fog. My doctor won't let me cycle, elliptical, or even practice yoga. I am losing my mind.

The only thing I want to do is run as hard as I can until everything is stripped away. The noises. With each passing day, I could feel my body grow tired, weary, fatter, and weaker. I just want to run until my mind is sterile again. But I can't. I can't. I can't do anything but just wait and let this slow torture claw my heart open. Instead of sleeping, I lie awake fighting my inner demons until they slowly creep into my subconscious, poisoning the very well which I drink coffee from.

I would scream declarations of war against myself, hoping to silence the voice that leeches my will to go on. "Just you wait. The minute I get out of here, I will run you dry!" Much to my disappointment, instead of blasting through the cold air tearing my lungs clean and abolishing my inner demons to smithereens as I have envisioned every morning, by night time I usually succumb to tears of defeat. I can hear my desires laughing and taunting me to just spring out of my seat and bolt into blissful happiness. I secretly lusted over the idea of running myself to the ground. I became the biggest threat to my own recovery.

"Oh come on, what can possibly go wrong? You have waited this long, haven't you? Just a little run won't hurt. Your bone is almost healed, what could possibly go wrong? Not all athletes are created equal and you're a tough girl."

"Well, yes, I do have a callous forming and that does mean my bone is stronger, but is one lousy run worth 5 weeks of wait I have already invested? Five weeks of pure torture during a time when the weather is crisp to perfection for a runner's high? How about re-injuring myself again so I won't be able to run the Chiangmai Marathon I am flying to Thailand for in December? Why not just keep injuring myself until I can't ever run normal again? That's fine and dandy too. I heard cycling is the new running." 

Fine. I get it. I have to wait. I can't help feeling hopeless tho.

And yet I hope. It really is quite powerful--this agonizing notion of hope. As Friedrich Nietzsche said "Hope in reality is the worst of evils because it prolongs the torments of man."

Yes, hope hurts. Hope hurts because it makes you fight. Fighting requires courage and bravery. It's much easier to lose without a fight. It's much easier to allow yourself to wallow in self-pity until your heart is cold and numb to human touch--even you can't thaw it.

I don't know about you, but I choose to fight. I choose to hope. Even if that means, waking up each day hoping and looking at my calendar to see the day I can run again get closer and closer.

This sucks right now. But I am much stronger than this. This too shall pass.