A Rough Week

So, this week was looking like I was going to break a PR in weekly miles.  However, that plan was thwarted by available overtime at work.  I just cannot turn down overtime when it’s offered to me unless I have a doctor’s appointment (which, now, thanks to my meds needing no further adjustment at this time, I don’t have any of those in the foreseeable future), training for work (won’t have any of that until the beginning of October), or I’ve already logged 24 hours of overtime for the week.  This is the 3^rd week in a row that I’ve pulled 24 hours of overtime at work. 

Thankfully, I did get in 3 days of running this week for a total of 26.7 miles.  I now have a 6.5 mile run to make up that I didn’t get to this week.  I still have plenty of time in the month to get that run squeezed in somewhere.  I’ll plan to do it on Thursday, between Wednesday’s 7.5 miles and Friday’s 6 miles.  Now, if I actually do Sunday’s planned 12.5 miles ON Sunday (instead of Monday, which I’m thinking is what is going to happen), then I will run that 7.5 on Tuesday and won’t have to run 3 days in a row.  But, if it happens how I think it will (and I don’t pull 24 hours of overtime again next week), then I will be running those 3 days in a row Wed-Thurs-Fri.  But, that’s okay with me.  If I do it, I WILL hit that PR for the most weekly miles by logging 32.5 miles.  But, we all know I like to run those extra 10^th’s of a mile when I can so I can log extra miles over the course of the whole month, so that total should be over 33 miles, easily.

So, this week has been a little rough for me.  When I went into work on Monday,  we were all told that there was an “incident” at one of our co-worker’s (Scott) houses early that morning and that he was in the hospital, but that he was okay and that he didn’t want any visitors.  They also slipped that he would have a “long emotional recovery” ahead of him.  We were then left to speculate about what happened.  Later in the day, another officer who apparently knew what actually happened told us that what had happened “wasn’t criminal.”  So, again, we’re left to speculate.  A few hours later, I was told by another co-worker what had happened.  I was shocked.  He had attempted suicide…with a gun.  Oh. My. God.  Scott comes across as such a happy person, always joking with everyone around him, always interested in what you have to say, always up for a conversation (especially about working out…he and I talked a lot about this subject). 

The next day I had planned to hit the gym and hit it hard.  However, when the alarm went off, I did not want to deal with anything, so I stayed in bed.  I stayed in bed until it was time to get ready for work.  On my drive to work, I regretted not doing something.  In fact, I regretted not going for a run.  When I found out my 89 year old grandpa had blood cancer the first thing I did was go for a run.  Why on earth would my response to this way more serious news not be to go for a run?  Why?  Why indeed.  So, I suffered (literally) through work on Tuesday, but made a promise to my sergeant (who had been told that I knew exactly what had happened and that I wasn’t taking it very well) that I would be running Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning happened and I did go for my run.  8.5 miles, in fact.  Well, actually, 8.7 miles because I took a wrong turn at the turnaround point of my run.  The first half of the run I was battling with on and off crying.  The second half of the run I managed to find some peace.  Part of that peace was that I had made a decision on what I could do so I didn’t feel worthless since I wasn’t able to visit Scott (per his wishes) in the hospital.  When the Boston Marathon bombings happened, I dedicated my runs to the victims.  Wouldn’t it make sense to do the same thing in this instance?  Of course.  So, when I got to work Wednesday afternoon, I emailed Scott’s aunt (who also works at the same place as we do, just in a different department) and told her that I was dedicating all the miles I ran to Scott and his recovery.  She emailed me back and told me that was awesome (her exact word!) and that she would tell him and was sure it would mean a lot to him.  She then emailed me again a few minutes later and said she had shown what I wrote to the rest of the family and they were all very touched.  That made me want to cry…but to cry HAPPY tears this time.

As the week has gone by, my feeling of peace has grown little by little.  I’m no longer having horrible dreams about what happened and waking up multiple times a night (despite taking NyQuil at bedtime).  I’m able to go throughout my day without obsessing over what happened to Scott and frequently mentally picturing him shooting himself.  However, despite this growing peace within me, I’m still having an extremely difficult time reconciling the happy Scott I’ve known for over a year and a half with the Scott that felt this was “necessary.”  I will most likely always have this problem.  Obviously, I don’t know him as well as I had hoped I did.  That’s okay, but still, as a person that suffers from chronic depression and has even had experience with suicidal fantasies in the past, I would have thought I could have seen something like this before it happened and said something to him.  I can’t beat myself up for not seeing it.  It just happened.  Maybe he’d been thinking about it for a while, but maybe (as we all believe and have been told) it was just a spontaneous thing that happened after a night of heavy drinking and situational depression.

So, I have to say, that if it weren’t for running, I would be completely lost and wallowing in my grief and frustration.  I am extremely relieved that Scott’s attempt did not succeed and that he has a second chance.  I wish him the best in the world and hope to be his friend in the future.  I hope that he can move forward with his life and recover.  I know his family will be there with him every step of the way and I hope he realizes just how much his friends and co-workers are there with him in spirit.