Good Grief 32

Even Jemima's had enough (and extra blip).
After a day when I struggled to emerge at all yesterday, I bludgeoned myself to get up for the Parkrun today. I worried that I was feeling like I did last time and that I'd just be beset by panic especially after yesterday and the feeling of trudging through yet another day. Anyway, I did it and in a better time that last time. I like to see all the different people ... there were 129 today, first timers, visitors and locals - a mother and her tiny daughter doing it for the first time - it was nice to encourage them on the way and congratulate them at the end (connection gets to be as tenuous as this), a chap who looked as though he found it really tough but made it, lots of very fast runners who were aiming intently for 'personal bests' with various running club shirts on. As I ran I thought about yesterday. I don't mind dreadful days, I think they have a part to play ... something else happens on those days. I spent much of it in bed and read bits and pieces and listened to 'The History of Ideas - On Love' on the iPlayer and the marvellous notion that Aristophanes had that humans were originally spherical with 4 sets of limbs and 2 heads. We could be female, male, or a bit of both. Then we got a bit big for our boots and Zeus split us and we are destined to forever thereafter be in search of our 'soulmate'. In its way a very modern and accepting notion of love in it's many forms as a soulmate could be of the same or different sex. That feeling of being split asunder resonated. As I ran uphill (...ok... about a 1% incline) I felt the panic rise and ran in to meet the incline as it met me; as I crossed the river I ran to join the water flowing beneath me; as I passed the dual carriageway I ran along with all the people going at a very different pace through this moment in our lives together; as I rounded the halfway marker I gratefully embraced the marshal's encouragements for the return trip. And at the end I got to hug my friend's ten year old who was a full 10 minutes or more ahead of us. I remember the day I found out that he was on his way into the world, with his twin sister.  Luckily he's still happy to be hugged a lot and I can hold him as if holding on to the world for a moment. The world where touch and closeness has essentially gone and I feel the additional loss of no family of my own. A loss I have felt for a long time but one that has returned with a vengeance since my husband died.
I am grateful for all of this but return to a world where I feel rent asunder.