Running therapy

Took a run with the hubby this evening. It was a brief run to put my knees to the test. Years ago I used to run every day, but I injured my knees and without money or health insurance I was never able to go see a specialist. Lately I started to notice that I was moving relatively pain free where my knees are concerned, this after things had reached such a state that even walking was painful. I haven’t really been doing anything other than drinking goji juice for a few months, not because I believe in the goji juice hype. I don’t want to credit drinking goji juice for the absence of knee pain, but something has definitely helped improve the condition of my knees.

I ran today! To understand how great that feels you would have know how much I loved running, so much that even agoraphobia did not prevent me from going out running every day. I probably won’t attempt to get back into running seriously before I’ve seen a specialist though, because it might not be that my knees are healed and I might just make them worse than they were before; but going out running today reminded me of how therapeutic running used to be. I felt so much better about myself at that time in my life and I was facing some of the most difficult times in my life. I had major family problems. I was a young single mother without a job trying to raise a precocious son, living with parents who were pretty much disgusted with me and wanted me gone, hating myself, lonely, feeling worthless, desperate.

But running kept me sane, quite literally. It helped to give me some little self esteem so that, as worthless as I felt because I had nothing, no money to take care of myself and my son, to get us our own apartment where we wouldn’t have to be reminded daily that we represented something intolerably shameful and disgraceful and burdensome to the people we lived around, and as lonely and desperate as I felt because I had no one in my life and had to be raising a child by myself (I was in a long distance relationship with the man I would later marry but we hardly communicated during those very difficult times), I was able to stay strong enough mentally to maintain my focus and keep pursing my goals and ambitions.

I didn’t run for miles today. I merely ran a few blocks; but I returned home feeling energized and positive.