Countdowns and stigma

Time is running out.....

Tomorrow there will be 3 weeks left until the day that I have been working towards for over 6 months, and dreaming of for most of my life. And the crazy thing is, whenever I imagine being there on the day all I can envisage is giggling like a child with complete disbelief that I am actually doing the London Marathon!!!

3 weeks. Oh boy.

To add to the whole sense of time running out, I have been out of action all week with a bad bout of tonsillitis, much like the bout I had before Christmas. However this close to VLM I don't have the time to lose a week to illness! My planned 22 mile run on Monday has had to be pushed back a few days so I can be certain that I'm well enough to tackle such a distance. I'm not even too fussed about times, I just want to get the miles into my legs and know that I can make the distance. I know I can race 20 miles, I proved that at Ashby, and to be honest this long run isn't even essential, but psychologically it will be very beneficial to do.

So in my building up my strength post infection I took the troops to Bramcote Park this morning. I've run through there so many times before, and have always wanted to take my family there and also let Barney have a romp. And it was fab, the children loved running through the woods and Barney bombed around with other dogs for ages. With some energy remaining along with a desire to get the screen protector on my phone renewed (it makes me go a bit OCD when it starts peeling), I hopped on a bus to town. I discovered my iPod in my handbag so decided to listen to it, and it so happened it was still on my VLM training playlist. As soon as I heard some of those songs it was as though my legs came alive and in an almost Pavlovian type of response, my body felt primed ready to run. So much so that when I came across a pair of escalators with the "up" escalator blocked off for repairs, I decided to run up the "down" one (obviously without there being anyone going down first). It felt a bit like going on a treadmill, and I did get a little clap at the top! These legs want to run! So I think that tomorrow, once family Easter stuff has been done during the morning, I'll pop off out and try to get the momentum going again.

It's been a bad couple of weeks for people with mental illness. Just as the work of Mind and similar charities has begun to raise the profile of mental illness in the public eye, in a bid to remove the stigma, suddenly that profile has gone crashing down alongside the Germanwings plane co-piloted by Andreas Lubitz. Nobody could know why Lubitz decided to crash a plane containing 150 passengers and full crew into the French Alps, but once it was discovered that he had suffered with depression, the press had a field day. The Daily Fail, err, sorry, Mail, Splashed across it's front page "Why on earth was he allowed to fly" in relation to his history of depression.

The response from Mind was as follows:
Clearly assessment of all pilots’ physical and mental health is entirely appropriate - but assumptions about risk shouldn't be made across the board for people with depression, or any other illness. There will be pilots with experience of depression who have flown safely for decades, and assessments should be made on a case by case basis. 

Believe it or not, despite a long history of depression myself, I have never felt the urge to kill myself taking over 150 people with me. That's not suicide, it's murder. When the two planes hit the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11, I don't recall the mental health of the hijackers being taken into account, and I refuse to comment on this. At the end of the day, they boarded a plane and sacrificed their own lives to kill many more people. Whether they had depression, anxiety, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, eczema or even ingrowing toenails, it doesn't matter! They were killers. As you can probably tell, this is an issue which really riles me! I have faced stigma a lot in my life. At university I was told I should "count myself lucky" I had been raped because it gave me a "valid reason" to be depressed. And that was from the sub dean. Years later I started training with ChildLine as a telephone counsellor, I was upfront right from the start about my history with anorexia and depression, and was told this was not a problem. However, fast forward a few months and I had passed the training with flying colours, only to be told that my mental health history made the branch supervisor uncomfortable so go home and don't return. I was completely healthy at that point, but the FEAR and STIGMA made someone in a position where she should know better, reject a good counsellor and leave me feeling worthless.

Stigma doesn't just work for people looking in; for years stigma has made me view myself as less than worthy, a lesser person than others. I never feel good enough, I feel like in a group of friends, I'm the "flaky" one. So I'm loud and bubbly and effervescent, and people like and respond to that. I have a quick wit and can make jokes up quickly, usually at my own expense, but I make friends easily. I'm a good, kind person, and I care about others. But get to know me and I'm a vulnerable, insecure mess who just wants to be liked. The mask always slips in the end. I know I'm not the only person who feels like this. I think that's why I have taken to running so much. My self-worth has slowly risen with every achievement. I know I walk taller and feel more confident because I know that my body is strong, my mind is strong, and I can get out there and run in the most abhorrent of conditions which would leave others sat in the warm on the sofa. I can mentally remain strong enough to get out there and run for hours when what I'd rather do is to stay with my children and play with them. I am a better person for running. I am a happier person for running.

So tomorrow I will get back out there and let my legs take me back to my happy place, where I can find some inner peace, and maybe even hunt down the Easter bunny!