Part 3
I ended part 2 by writing that when Paul started dating, I paid no attention to my stress and injury signals. As I continue writing about this topic I need to make something clear: the lessons I learned about knowing and honouring my limits during this phase of my life are almost entirely related to Paul finding a new partner and me learning to live with it. I have written, deleted and re-written this post many times out of concern for fairness and balance. In all honesty, I don’t think that the topic lends itself to fairness and balance. Read accordingly and remember that there are two sides to this story, even if I’m only writing one.
Coming back to CrossFit and the winter of 2021, Paul’s romance had been out for all to see in the comment section of SugarWOD. I stopped using SugarWOD completely. What they posted wasn’t anything I wouldn’t want to see from anyone else, I just didn’t need it in my life. When I stopped using SugarWOD, I stopped seeing other people’s results and rankings. I no longer started my workouts with a sense of what my results should be based on what other women had done. I started truly scaling my workouts to my own level of comfort and my own goals. I started setting goals that supported my body, with all its challenges and limitations instead of trying to fix what was wrong with it. It’s a subtle difference but an important one. With time, being more respectful of your injuries and limitations will heal the injuries and expand the limitations. But the difference in mindset between “something wrong needs fixing” and “I’m going to the gym because it feels good” is fundamental to recovery.
In the family home, things were deteriorating quickly. Explaining why things were so bad is difficult without getting into a long description of the multi-layers of crap bearing down on me at the time. It wasn’t just Paul and his girlfriend being insensitive and inconsiderate; it was that, plus school closures, plus full time work, plus seeking support payments, plus the eviction from the family home, plus a teen refusing to live with me, plus my housemate moving in, plus isolation from friends and family, plus never having quite enough money, plus, plus, plus. The curve balls kept coming and coming. I took time off work to rest, I saw a therapist, and I roped in my family doctor. I tried to put systems and supports in place to get better at batting the curve balls. But what I needed was for the balls to stop coming. My life was like the broken tennis ball machine that keeps spitting balls at a prostate tennis player hiding in the corner of the court.
Dealing with this emotional turmoil was like training with an injury: it wasn’t making me more resilient, it was making me weaker. When Paul started dating, I thought that I would get used to it. Just like my attempts at improving my CrossFit performance, every tiny push past my tolerance level would leave me injured. I needed to rest but I didn’t know how to rest from this drama without leaving the family home and hoping the children would follow me.
The gym no longer felt safe for me. I didn’t like attending classes led by the coaches that Paul and his girlfriend hung out with. I didn’t know what anyone had heard about me and I wasn’t steady enough not to care. I didn’t want to attend classes with Paul and/or his girlfriend. The ease of CrossFit, with programmed workouts held at convenient times, was completely gone: I had to check my schedule first, I check which class I could attend, check who was coaching, check who else had signed up for class, and double check before heading out of the house for any last minute changes. I couldn’t control who was going to class when, or how Paul was acting in the family home, but I could control my own actions. I could avoid certain places and certain people.
At first, giving myself permission to avoid certain places and certain people felt like a liberation. But the dance of avoidance quickly became ridiculous. I avoided interacting with Paul as much as possible, which is not ideal when you are still parents to the same 9 children. At some point I told my therapist: “I feel like my life would be easier if I could just forgive what they did and move on.” I still felt like I should be getting over it already, but I couldn’t make my body do it. It’s hard to explain: I would have the best of intentions to be friendly, or at least indifferent, to Paul’s girlfriend when I dropped off the kids at his house for instance. But I couldn’t. I would just freeze and stay in the car, drop the kids off on the porch and leave. When I had to deal with Paul, be it in a parent teacher meeting or in person, I would go into a full anxiety response: my heart would try to beat out of my chest, I would get cold sweats and need to go for a nap after. Just like my CrossFit injuries, training more was not making me fitter.
Until one day last December, I showed up at the gym for class at the same time as Paul’s girlfriend. I had booked a class at the same time as my daughter and forgot to check the class attendance list. I was looking forward to spending time with my daughter but in the hustle and bustle of organizing our little workout spot I ended up at the back of the class and my daughter at the front with Paul’s girlfriend. It wasn’t done on purpose, but as class started I started feeling really sad. I watched them have fun together from the back of the class and I just couldn’t shake the sadness. I kept thinking: « Everyone has moved on but me. » The level of emotional pain I was feeling was completely out of proportion with its cause and I was swallowing back tears trying to break a sweat. I thought of leaving but the old “stick-to-it-iveness” caught up to me: I didn’t want my daughter to feel bad, I didn’t want my coach to think I was a drama queen, heck I didn’t even want Paul’s girlfriend to feel bad that I was leaving because of her! I didn’t want to be a quitter, I didn’t want to be there but I didn’t want to leave. At one point I remembered a sign we often see at marathon races: “REMEMBER: YOU PAID TO DO THIS” and I thought “Yeah, why am I paying for this?”
It was shortly after 7AM and it was raining. I thought about my cozy house, I thought about lying in bed listening to the rain outside, thought about the warm bed I had just left, I thought about Glen, who must have just woken up. I hear my own voice say: “You have a safe place to go to, where you are loved just as you are. Return to safety.” I cleaned up my workout spot and told my coach “I’m not feeling well, I’m going home.” He waved me off putting one hand on his heart as if he knew why. I waved my daughter goodbye with a smile and texted her that I was feeling sick. When I got home, Glen was getting ready to start his day. I lied down on his bed and he said: “You’re back early, how was your workout?” and I started sobbing, big, heavy, wet sobs, like waterlogged snowflakes.
In the midst of my sobbing, I remembered reading about abdominal inhibition in “Yoga and the Quest for the True Self”:
Inhibition of breathing actually begins at the core of the body, in the belly. Contraction of the big abdominal muscles pulls the upper part of the ribcage forward and down, and pulls the pubic bone forward and up, which draws the entire trunk into fetal posture. This ‘withdrawal’ reflex is the most primitive human response to danger. It automatically inhibits breathing and effectively stops grieving and crying. (Sobbing happens deep in the belly.)
I had been holding my abdomen so tight for so many years. Big waves of grief started washing over me, right from my abdomen. I suddenly understood that while avoiding painful situations had been a major step in stopping the depression spiral, the most important part of long term recovery was the ability to find my way back to safety, mentally and physically. To take deliberate steps away from feelings of guilt, fear and self-loathing and into feelings of comfort, confidence and love. To turn towards the people and places that felt good, to take my body — the vessel where all these emotions take place — to a place of emotional safety.
Healing from physical or emotional injury requires that we first stop the wounding. But just like a bone may need to be reset after a break, simply stopping the aggression will only get us so far in the healing journey. We may heal eventually, but we may heal in jagged and uneven ways. My hope through this journey is not to become hardened to pain but to build a stronger, smoother muscle that can stand up to challenges while retaining its grace and flexibility.
To bring all this around, I found poetic irony in learning how to push myself to injury at my CrossFit gym, learning how to stop pushing at my CrossFit gym, and learning how to return to safety at my CrossFit gym. When I took that one deliberate step to leave the gym when it didn’t feel safe, my recovery from depression truly started. It felt like my nervous system could finally trust me to let it rest. I have taken hundreds of steps toward what feels good since, from not following up on better paying job opportunities, to starting a morning walk routine and stopping a morning walk routine, to getting up at 5am every morning to knit in peace before the day gets underway. I have a piece of chocolate every morning with my coffee, that’s not a healthy breakfast and that’s ok, it feels good. I have taken time off work when my personal life was just too much and I only sign up for CrossFit class when the time, coach and workouts are right. I’m getting to know anger and manage it, an emotion I kept repressed for years. I cry a lot when things are too much, letting the tears flow from deep inside of me, then I have a nap, hug it out, and move on.
I no longer have panic responses when I deal with Paul. I am able to have one-on-one conversations about money and children with him and we are better at co-parenting. I still have no desire to be friends with him and his girlfriend but I’m ok with it. I have methodically undone the bounds of attachment that kept me emotionally tied to Paul even after we separated, and I am now tying new bounds to foster good co-parenting and nothing more.
I have accepted that forgiving Paul for his hurtful behaviour in the family house was important, but forgiving his girlfriend was unnecessary. I may get there someday, if it feels good.
I’m incredibly proud of you. Your candor, your honest vulnerability, of the life lessons you’ve learned and that you share. This has (and continues to be) a tremendous journey you are on. The revelations you have come to are wise and healthy - and admirable. I admire you just as much as I always have, and I can’t wait till our next (virtual or real) hang out.