M.F.E.O.

Running wants to break up with me.

That’s how I feel. Rejected. Like I’m in a relationship that has become old and stagnant and the days are numbered. As much as I try to get it back, it doesn’t want me and that feels so strange. You know one another so well and yet, there is an uncomfortable distance between the two of you. You know it’s there, but you can’t figure out why. We have a couple good days and then, wham!, back to the bad days. We don’t even look each other in the eye anymore. We just coexist and put up with each other. I want to talk about it but Running doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say.

In the beginning, it was never this way. Running never made me moody, never irritated me. If there were bad times, I didn’t notice. I was too caught up in the newness of each run. Each new distance brought us closer and more aligned with one another and the world. Each new challenge was taken on with the eager enthusiasm that only a new love can bring. There were memories made almost daily. Together in the sun, the snow, the rain. On a West coast beach, on humid Kentucky pavement, even on a trail at thirteen thousand feet, we felt at home together. It was simple, yet exciting. New, yet comfortable. We were clearly M.F.E.O. Made for each other.

Over the last week, I have had four wonderful outings with Running. The knee injury didn’t bother me at all. There were sunny skies and cooler temperatures, things were perfect. I had begun to see all the miles ahead again. It was almost too good to last.

Today, as I walked down the hall at work beside a coworker, I got the feeling in the back of my knee that someone had sneaked around the corner of a cubicle wall and thrown an axe that had been sitting in hot coals at the back of my leg. I buckled, grabbed my coworker with one hand, the wall with the other and thought I might completely collapse. It was like Running called me and said “oh sorry, I can’t make it to dinner tonight after all. Or tomorrow night. And I don’t know about the night after that, either.” Stabbing pain. The miles I could see so clearly yesterday all seemed to be slipping away in that moment.

How can this be happening? Things have been great for two weeks. TWO WEEKS!

Running just doesn’t want me anymore. It’s acting strange and unpredictable. It’s like that thing some people do when they want to break things off but don’t have the nerve to do it so they just become distant and mean until you go ahead and do the dirty work.

But I don’t care. I’m ignoring it. I don’t accept the break up. Even if I am spending time with a handsome, svelte Elliptical and a shiny, desperate-for-attention Hardtail. Even if I see running giving attention to countless others on the streets, as if it loves them more than me. I don’t care. Sure, we may go our separate ways for a while and the pain I have to endure as I heal and grow will be difficult, but that’s okay. We can work through the hardships and pain, like we have in the past. In the end, I know we will find each other again.

We’re meant to be.