Growing Pains

Tough Mudder. If it starts to seem like I’m becoming obsessed, it’s because I am. I need to be: right now I can’t do one push up, I can’t run a mile straight, I can’t do a pull-up, and most of all I can’t keep feeling so insecure and lacking conviction. So what can I do: I can run 7/10 of a mile without stopping, I can lift 10 and 20 lb weights, and have one hell of a crazy freaking idea that I’m going to be able to run 12 miles, slog through a swamp (several, actually), crawl through a tunnel of tires, monkey bar across a late, run through fire and electrical wires, climb over several 12 ft walls, and other crazy challenges worthy of a military training camp. People train for a year for this kind of shit, and I’m going to try to hack my own way through training for it in 13 weeks, part of that time while completing an entire SEMESTER’s worth of school work..All of this coming from the girl who, a month ago, was trying to use sleeping as an escape from life..who almost got beaten down by life itself..Am I crazy? Yeah, I’m starting to think so. But I’m going to do it. I WILL. That is not even remotely a question. It’s gonna happen. It’s gonna take a while, and a lot of work, a lot of work that I don’t think even I have come to terms with yet, and it’s not gonna be pretty, but it will happen, I promise you that. Actually, I promise ME that. I want to do this for ME, to prove to everybody else as much as myself that I can do something I set my mind to. So I really ought to start going to the gym twice a day, making myself run a mile without stopping and ramping up the internal mental motivation to OVERDRIVE. I’m going to kick my depression in the mother fucking nuts, hit it over the head with a baseball bat, cut its body up into 400 tiny little pieces, throw it in a garbage bag, and feed it to a tiger. And every time my brain says “no, stop” or “I don’t want to do this,” no matter what the situation* I’m going to tell it very nicely to shut the FUCK up. Cus sleeping in til 11 is no longer acceptable. Laying in bed instead of painting a master copy of a Singer Sargent is no longer acceptable. Watching 2 movies in a row on Netflix while eating a pint of ice cream is no longer acceptable. Mediocrity is no longer acceptable. I want to make myself so busy that my brain doesn’t have the time or energy to think about not having any friends or being a bad illustrator or not having the guy of my dreams or any of the other silly things it likes to concoct to make me unhappy. You aren’t gonna win this time, evil brain-bully!

*unless the situation is a man leaning out the window of an old white van telling me he’s got a puppy in back that I should come see