End of an Era

I feel like I've used that title before - maybe not. Maybe O'm just going crazy, but for once, my title relates partially to my message... blog... post. This past weekend in Indiana was one full of mixed emotions for me. On one hand I was determined to kick ass as it was my last xc race of the season. And now that I think about it, there was no other hand. I was determined, like a dog after the bacon covered post-man. But what happened was short of shocking and to say it was embarrassing would be one of the biggest understatements I have ever uttered.

I don't know what to say for my last race - I wasn't sad that it was all over like I thought I would be - I was just a little mixed. I was surprised that I didn't tear up at least a little bit cause I've always been one of those sentimental saps that cries. I refused to read the last HP novel cause it would be admitting it was over and I probably would have cried... That's just how sentimental and emotional I can be.

I'm assuming that it hasn't hit me because I'm still coming back next year to be undergrad assistant - maybe but I still wont be able to race.

Let's start at the beginning. I've been running cross country since I was in high school - 8 years. The accumulation of an 8 year relationship ended in flames. Not the good kind either. These weren't the oh, this is so toasty and warm and niiice flames. These were the holy fuck I'm on fucking fire and I think I'm in hell flames that the bible warns you about.

Oh yeah, my failure this past weekend was in biblical proportions. But as my favorite quote tells me - Never let a win get to your head, or a loss to your heart. It's easy to bounce back from a win - it's easy to tell yourself to calm down, but when you feel like your heart has been ripped straight from your chest... yeah, it's not that easy to bounce back from such failure.

And it's still easy to do that if you still have a year or more to come back to. You still have that cushion from the blow. But as a senior, there was no pillow of next year to stop me from crushing all my bones when I fell. I'm laying in the bottom of a ravine with bones coming out my ears, staring up at the sky and wondering where the hell the years have gone.

Where have I gone? I'm 21 years old and I still don't know which way is up in the world. I still have problems figuring out what I'm going to do with my life, what I want to accomplish. I have a strange fear of being forgotten and with my final years coming up, I have no idea how I want to leave my mark in the world. A lot of people are satisfied with being comfortable, with being good at something, with being average. But I've been average my whole life and I feel like I need to find something I am great at. I'm so sick and tired of being average, of being passed over, looked over underestimated and forgotten... and there is nothing, nothing so heartbreaking as finishing such a long career in such a horribly downward spiral.

Where has mu love of running gone? More and more these days I'm feeling indifferent to it, there is no more passion in me at times and it scares me. I go through phases and it's the phases where I jump out of bed already in my running clothes that I'm longing for - it's those phases I wish time would slow down for.

But time sucks ass.

That's the moral of this story folks.