Running Thoughts

My job isn't exactly a walk in the park.
But I've recently realized that it's not as impossible as I felt up till now.
It's more like an easy to medium run.
But before I was carrying an 80lb rucksack that kept getting heavier with the increasing stressors and crises and uncertainty. But I didn't realize I was carrying the rucksack.
I just thought I was weak, that the weight was a part of my body.
You see, I had a distorted view of reality.
So what you saw as easy and that I was unnecessarily freaking out, I saw as a race I could never win.
Each thing weighed me down more, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't move forward.
Maybe you saw the rucksack and tried to tell me to take it off, but I saw it as a part of my own being. Therefore I couldn't understand when you tried to help, I just thought I had to fix myself.
I saw the burden I was becoming for those of you who were walking or jogging with apparent ease. My complaining and wet blanket of an aura was cramping your style. I saw that but felt hopeless.
I was barely surviving.
Then, when I had a that conversation, it was the first time I had the realization that maybe the extra 100 lbs wasn't normal. Maybe it didn't need to be there. Wasn't inherently a part of me. That was the first time in a long time that my twisted reality came momentarily into a blurry focus.
I had to get the rucksack off.
But I didn't know how.
I didn't have the strength or tools to take it off myself.
I searched for someone who could help, but my mobility during the crisis made that a difficult order to fill. I just desperately wanted help. Now I could more clearly see the toll it was taking on relationships, but I felt helpless. Hopeless. It seemed I'd never get it off. Even if I left my job, I'd just be carrying it on with me to the next one.
No, I needed to be free from the extra burden, to find my lost self, to be lucky and free again as I uncovered the me underneath.
So after bouncing around, crying out for help, I finally found some. I started the journey of learning to take it off, throw off the weight and be lucky and free. Medication. Therapy. Prioritizing healing, investing time in me. Meditation, reading, exploring contemplation. Seeing the cognitive distortions that contributed to building the weight I had internalized as something wrong with me.
After several weeks of hard work, surrendering this healing work to a God who is able, I think I'm learning to taste a life where I am capable of running.
The rucksack is gone.
Yes, I've got to relearn proper form, retrain my back to practice proper posture, get back in shape and  learn exercises to help prevent it from reappearing, but now I can finally look back and see the reality of the situation.
No wonder it seemed impossible.
No wonder dread and discouragement followed me like a lost puppy.
I didn't realize it until recently, but that wasn't the real me. I had become one with the extra weight, coming to resent and hate who I had become. Feeling incapable of doing anything under the sun. It weighed me down and deeply affected those closest around.
And for that I'm so sorry.
But now, I'm relearning to be lucky and free.