Couch to 5k
Three summers ago I had something of an emotionally turbulent time. I had been trying to be well, to be the person I had been when I was well, doing all the things I had done before in the ways I had done before. But now I had a roommate, who far from enjoying the life I was leading would instead complain passive aggressively with every decision, get irate whenever I took a shower, and kept urinating in the refrigerator. We were not friends.
I would get dressed up, wear makeup, take showers whenever I wanted, as if my body was the body I’d once enjoyed, and my roommate would quickly remind me that mine was no longer that body. As a result I’d become overwhelmingly fatigued and respond by trying to keep moving, stay ahead of it, read more, work harder, keep pushing.
But you can’t outrun entropy.
The irony is that the harder you try the faster it finds you. MS had become the unstoppable force to my immovable ass.
I kind of imploded a bit and things really became apparent when I turned up one day at my mum’s in floods of tears. I’d managed to get through 3 years without really owning the disease, without grieving, by just running, and then all the grief hit me at once.
When I was at the worst of my crisis one of my doctors told me to walk somewhere. ‘You’re not going to die’ she reassured me.
I went on my first proper walk in a long time that day. My heart thrummed a dubstep bass line by the time I got home and I was dragging myself through the front door. Six months later I had built up to a daily walk, around two miles, strolling through the backstreets of Winchester.
I decided to go further, to learn to run. I started up ‘couch to 5k’ and Sarah Millican was in my ears encouraging me every step of the way. I’d been telling my friends how far I was getting each week and they were there, as they always are, my hype managers, cheering me on.
Then at week 4, inching toward 5k, I relapsed and rapidly lost the ability to run and indeed even to make it around my usual walk. A year later I had bought my first wheelchair, Firefly, and a year after that my second wheelchair, The Rocinante. The transition wasn’t just from walking to wheelchair but also from able bodied to disabled. A wheelchair really confronts you with the realities of your situation.
I worked out as hard as I could, gradually building up my strength, suddenly finding I could open jars more easily, lift heavy objects, and I could see muscles building. Bearing in mind that even when I had testosterone pumping through my veins I had never been as muscular as I was becoming.
And today, well over two years after Sarah Millican offered her first choice words of encouragement, I finally made it to 5k.
I had music in my ears, the road ahead of me, and a broad smile on my face. I. Freaking. Love. working out in my chair. There were of course kindly people stopping their cars to offer help and seeing me as a struggling pained woman unable to manage the trials life has thrown at her alone. But the way I see myself is impenetrable. I’m a dragon rider, a ship pilot, pushing the Roci to her limit as I skid down hills and soar up the next ones.
Here’s the real shit though. The question that I can’t answer and yet keeps finding me.
Would I have done this, pushed my ass to 5k in a wheelchair, if I didn’t have MS imposing the barriers I have to overcome to participate in the world? Would I be this happy? I’m so different now to the person I was before, I’ve adapted to my brokenness, I’ve grieved the person I once was and have become someone new. And you know what? I quite like who I’m becoming.
So here’re the question. Do I have MS to thank for making me the person I am now?
Maybe.
I’d still take the cure tomorrow, no hesitation, but I do think that this monster pacing at the limits of my shields, the marks our previous encounters have left upon me, the threat it perpetually imposes, have made me something entirely new.
So I guess thanks, MS, you’re the worst roommate, you complain all the time, I can’t shower without checking with you first, and the refrigerator still doesn’t smell right, but without you, I wouldn’t be me.