100 Words Per Mile: Stillness Is My Worst Enemy

Shin splints and a weak appetite for reading.

November 18, 2020
0.0 miles
0:00:00

I haven’t run in ten days. The shin splints are killing me. The timing couldn’t be worse because my wife and I are in the purgatory between embryo transfer and finding out whether or not this thing worked. Couple that with the math of it all, and I’m stuck running simulations in my head, simmering in my own negative fortune-telling.

Stillness has always been my worst enemy.

When you consider my wife and I’s situation (mild male factor), IVF tends to work about 60% of the time. That means 40% of the time it fails. I understand and accept that—but acceptance doesn’t eradicate my frustration and fractured comprehension. Maybe it’s because I’ve been stewing with ice on my ankle and watching television shows that are inconceivably all about characters having children.

This is when that bit of darkness starts to scratch at the edges. There’s whiskey in my garage, a lot of daylight ahead of me, and a week before we’ll know anything. This morning I stretched for almost an hour while I listened to Armchair Expert, a podcast hosted by Dax Shepherd and Monica Padman. This week they hosted Halsey who I think is attractive, but I also learned was mightily thoughtful. She spoke a lot about her experience with therapy (a regular conversation on Armchair Expert), and while I appreciated it, it actually sort of threw me into a funk. It could be that I haven’t talked to someone in a while myself. I thought writing might help. I might’ve been wrong. Maybe I should read. Sometimes, it’s better to jump into someone else’s headspace.

That’s it for now.

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