Never give up

                "Never give up". Those are the words I turn to quite often. It use to happen a lot, I call them the down-under days. Days where everything tat happens that day becomes part of that negative narrative that only helps to drag one down, nothing feels right.  Nowadays, they happen less and less often, but they still come and when they do I am more and more ready for them with strategies I have developed over time. I have suffered from what I call sadness and what the general society calls depression for my entire adult life. No, I have never been diagnosed but I know enough to recognize the symptoms and although it's not a severe issue, it's an issue I've had to address over the years. Over time, I've had to come up with many ways to help myself come back up when I'm down, all of them are strategies I personally use on me and don't require anyone else's help to make it back up. Because these sort of days come always unannounced, I can't possibly rely on someone else to come pull me out of these ruts, most people in my life hardly know they are there. One aspect that has helped me has been knowing that I am not alone in this issue of mine. As private as this experience is for me and for everyone else who deals with it, EVERYONE I meet have these down-under days, everyone I know carries some form of sadness in them of which they also learn to harness, or not. These people, they too feel as hopeless and as stuck as I do when they come. 
           Lucky for me, running has had a restorative affect on my life, on my outlook, on my soul. Getting some miles under my feet refils me, reassures me and completely eradicates all the ugly and bad that tends to mount daily. All that mental chatter that tends to weave those negative narratives just wiped clean. Running has been not only restorative, but also strengthening. One thing about running though is that the feeling of strength and power I get from it only lasts about a day, two at most. Three days, at the end of the school year, where there are events all evenings and no time can even be carved to work out surely allows all the negative feelings to surface. Yesterday, after three days of no running I finally get my power back at the gym. The gym is not at all one of my favorite places to run, at any run there may or may not be sweaty people besides me who may or may not smell of either perfume or sweat, or both....not at all fun!  But to walk out of there with 5 miles under my feet is a win for that day....now in two days, I will need to battle once again.