Coming to Terms

Writing is a way that I process, understand, and heal. Sometimes it's quick, but more often it's slow and sorta brutal. I'm in the brutal phase, but I keep moving forward. Ish.

One of the writing methods I've been using is brain dumping all the hurts, going back to the very first fight I can remember when I left the room crying only to come back once I was calm to find him sleeping, unperturbed ... to today, seeing that he's traveling again this weekend to Oregon and Washington, having a grand time, while letting the havoc he created here remain mine to rebalance. Poorly. Ish.

I said FOREVER that it wasn't about his running. Every fight was about the same thing in my memory. I needed more of him and he gave less and less. Obsessed with "us" in the beginning, living completely separate lives at the end. It was the ultimate discarding. And it wasn't about running, not really. Don't get my wrong, over time, running was certainly the reason he had less and less left to give to us. But more than the time and money spent on him alone away from us, it was that the dedication and joy he had for running made it clear that he had the capacity to give. He just didn't give it to us.

There were so. many. moments. An early memory of taking the kids, alone, to spend Mikko's birthday with family friends. I have a vivid memory of the dad carrying my grinning son on his shoulders. Not his dad. His dad went for a run. A birthday party missed after long nights crewing virtual strangers because that was fun and obligations were not. Two years, I brought the kids to the North Face 50k kids fun run. They had their faces painted and blazed through the short course. He was never there for that. But the year his runner-of-the-moment asked him to participate, he LED the kids fun run in a COSTUME. By then, my kids were too big to enjoy it. And I didn't know who that man was. Arguments over vacations with the kids because his Colorado race that year made money tight. I said I wouldn't go to the Colorado race and take the kids with that money saved. He relented. This was the last non-running vacation we ever took with the kids together. Every single "family" trip after that was to chase some race. 

Someone who knows him well recently asked whether I thought he had an ASD. I liked and hated the idea. I liked it because it meant it wasn't someone's fault, mine OR his. But I also hated it. It let him off the hook for being such a disappointing husband and father. But then I was reminded that "he used to be different." I started to try to determine when it all changed. This, by the way, is really unhealthy. Trying to rebuild the history of a painful relationship is, well, fucking painful. But I digress. 

In 2015, we had traveled to CA for Wester States with his friend Luke. When Luke left, I thought I had never felt so alone. Luke is larger than life and makes everyone around him feel warm and seen. When he left, and we were alone, it was so palpably empty. Even then, there was nothing between us anymore. That was an early glimpse. It really changed some time in 2017. He'd been running intensely for about 4 years, mostly locally, pretty successfully and, happily, it seemed. I thought we'd found a balance. He wanted more. Not more in life, just more running. More miles in cooler places. 

It was in October 2017 that he created a new Instagram. Just running and beer, no family. A clear indication of what he valued and what he wanted his life to look like. His personal account went pretty much dormant. The cracks were showing in our marriage, our life, our family, but not in his running. His running life exploded while our life imploded. We were slowly being erased from who he wanted to be. What he was running toward. 

It was President's Day 2019. We both had the day off and the kids were at school. Though I worked from home 2 days a week and he worked remote 100%, he ran during his lunch every day. I had therapy at noon. I have always tried to fix myself to fit into the right sized box so someone will love me. It's a delightful personality trait. I believe Taylor would call me a "pathological people pleaser." I cried through most of the session. This chasm was growing and I was spread so thin. I was alone with two kids with a husband planning his life everywhere but here. My therapist convinced me it was time to talk about us in a real way, in a way that laid groundwork, set boundaries, clarified my needs. We had planned to meet for lunch, which was rare for us. to do anything that was just the two of us, really. He texted midway through my appointment to cancel. He was still sleeping. It was so classic. 

He texted again and said he would meet me after all. A glimmer of hope. We ordered our beers, and I braced myself for some things that needed to be said. He started talking about running. I gave up. I spent the entire lunch listening to his plans for the future. Two Colorado races that year, weeks apart in July. I suggested he spend the summer there. It's what he wanted, obviously, and I was nothing if not willing to try something that might work (cue future cross-country move 4 months after I asked for a divorce for the first time). We couldn't afford it or he probably would have. Instead, he spent the month of July there living an adventure we both craved but only he had the audacity to have. There's a reason all his running friends are in their thirties and mostly childless. It can be an incredibly self-centered endeavor. The handful of moms and dads I know who ultrarun scaled back when they had kids or so intensely prioritized those kids that there was never a question of their relative value. Not him. As his kids (and responsibilities) grew, he leaned into running, not us.

I didn't give up completely. I supported his running and raised his family, with pretty limited complaints all things considered. Believe me, you should hear my friends. I continued to crew for him everywhere he went, even for years after we separated. I have metaphorically carried him out of aid stations and over finish lines long after I hadn't had a real conversation with him about anything we both cared about. At some point, he didn't even thank me anymore, like I no longer existed. At the last High Lonesome 100 I crewed him at, he barely made it out of Monarch Pass. I sat with him for nearly two hours, unwilling to let him give up. When he finally left the aid station, the captain and another volunteer gushed about how they would tell that story for ever, how he was ready to give up and I simply wouldn't let him. I didn't ruin their love story by sharing that I was his ex-wife. I made his races our vacations, crafting adventures for my kids around his solo sport. I taught them to celebrate this thing that created such a rift. We fell in love with the same mountains, but when the mountains turned out not to be home, we came back alone. He made a new life. Spoiler: It's about running.

So I don't recommend trying to pinpoint the demise of your relationship. You may find it. You may name it. You may even be able to see it clearly (I cannot - he just didn't love us enough to do better and nothing about that makes sense to my mama heart). But you won't solve it and you'll relive it and it will hurt. Like I've always said, it was never his running. It was just that he loved anything so much more than he loved our family being our family. And that is, in a way, coming to terms with reality.