“THE BLACK LAKE SHINES LIKE AN OBSIDIAN MIRROR AND YOU LOSE TRACK OF TIME STARING AT THE SURFACE” — John Jakob Astor, Lich King of Astoria and founder of the Pacific Northwest trading empire and immortal Solitaire champion.
The Black Lake obstacle run is the hardest in the United States. People show up for it completely unaware they’re about to take part in it and mill around until shoved out onto the path and someone – usually an older rather robust person from Dallas Texas shouts, “GO” directly into their face. Some need a shove to get going. The Crossfitters always think they’re going to win of course, but they’re seldom even close to the undefined finish line. The first three obstacles usually totally tank them – the random large tractor tire in the path that they can’t resist flipping, the plyometric area, and then…..the mirror. “Brah, look at this six pack Brah, I know Brah look at this bicep” and usually they’re lost right there at mile one.
I had accompanied Jase across the river to Cape Disappointment for a training run over the weekend when I saw the milling crowd and blank stares. Oh’ this obstacle run has had me in its grips before, let me tell ya’ — I have failed at it so many times. That is the purpose of two rather obvious tattoos on my forearms. Left & Right, which I’ll explain later. Everyone has a trick or two for completing the obstacle run – IF they manage to complete it.
I started out, I didn’t even need some jack-ass yelling in my face and judging me but received it anyway, per usual at the start of Black Lake… Sometimes they yell that I’m a huge let down or call me a liberal sell out. This, this I am used to – standard operating procedure to start out the obstacle run.
First two miles and not a damn thing. Sun was shining, a cool sea breeze gently brushed my face drying any sweat and my legs pumped along like a machine under me. It was all too easy. I didn’t see anyone else on the trail, but I tend to run alone somewhere mid-pack in most races so it didn’t bother me. Up ahead was an aid station and I could smell it right away. Fresh baked donuts.
Oh’ not just any, you know — if they were substandard, if they had been manufactured for mass consumption at the local superstore – bah – not eating that crap. But nope, these were artisan creations, the dough lovingly raised and fried and decorated. They were delicious works of art and piping hot fresh. I was handed one topped with a gentle none-too sweet glaze and toasted coconut. They had done their research all right, “stay right here and you can have these every single day!” The person offering it to me was thin, attractive and smiling from ear to ear. Possibly the most trustworthy person in the whole world at that moment, “hey, don’t worry, just one won’t hurt you. One a day. One an hour. One a MINUTE.”
I realized I had swayed myself into a trance and with utmost regret left the donut for someone else and took off again. Everything from here on out would be much harder. It would be hell.
The next obstacle was my nephew who is a teenager – love that kid and he’s super smart and has his whole life ahead of him. “Look auntie! I’m getting my ears pierced with the wide gauge plug so I look great for Burning Man!” Oh’ this obstacle has gotten to me before, ‘family members making horrendously bad life decisions.’ I felt it, the need to stop right there and say — OH HELL NO. But as I run by I said, “don’t do it, you’ll regret it for life” but I kept going, I didn’t linger on it.
The next obstacle was puppies and they were playing ball and just wanted to cuddle and there was one that was a baby Corgie that wanted me to pick it up for a cuddle and scooped it up and took it with me a few feet before putting it back down again with a pat and kiss on the forehead. So much awwww’ but I had to get going. This run was tougher than ever this year.
Now at this point you might be thinking — hey Paula — you’re missing out on life by keeping going. Maybe you should have really savored that donut and helped your nephew and what would be the harm of just spending all day cuddling puppies? “What would be the harm…just a little…just one…” Oh that is what fucking nails you on this obstacle race. Read on….
After the puppies was a long stretch of not much to see but sunshine and the occasional gull. Up above in the Hemlock canopy the Hermit Thrushes were singing and everything was perfection. I was in the moment and part of the landscape. I belonged to beach, sun, trees, and water. There wasn’t much apart from me and it. We were one. Running zen had me.
Then a large crowd was ahead and I recognized it. FACEBOOK. My old nemesis. Ahead were lots of bad ideas and opinions and immediately I felt the need to stop and just sort all that shit out.
“Running will ruin your knees!”
“Like my tits? I mean my necklace, my new necklace nestled in my 45 year old cleavage – I’m not insecure at all!”
“YOU MUST CARE ABOUT POLITICS! Read my rant of the day”
“Here is a cat photo”
“I’m new to running, can anyone suggest a good shoe?”
“KETO. KETO. KETO!!!”
“Explain to me far left politics versus the far right” (no clue…but I feel compelled to comment…)
“Slow running everyone, run SLOWER! — No HIIT, work at 110% at all times!”
And I caught myself thinking…. Now that’s harmless and okay, that’s really not appropriate, well maybe I should comment on this, or encourage this person over here, this is good this is bad, this is my OPINION….I need an opinion on ALL these things, but there are so very many, so very very many…it might take awhile. Having an opinion on every single damn thing feels like tasked with building walls all day long in my brain. I stumbled, I almost stopped, I almost got sucked into the vortex that I could now clearly see for a stinking shit hole it was. I ran fast away from it.
LEFT ARM TATTOO SAYS:
“Remember Who You Are”
I looked at it and kept going. Because sure, I love puppies, I love donuts, and I love to help – but who I am requires that I keep on going.
That’s when shit got real.
The high hill of expectations loomed rocky and full of danger ahead. A crowd was gathered under a billboard and on the billboard was the word, “SHOULD.” There were coworkers, “I can literally walk faster than you run, you should give up and get a real job” and there were family members, “well I have a comment on your running photo *snicker* but I guess I will do you a favor and just not even say, you should be embarassed and full of shame anytime you put on running shoes” and “if you have all that energy for running – too bad the laundry isn’t getting done, you should get your house cleaned up!” …. It just seemed to go on forever but I am an old girl now in the middle of life and I know for a fact that it is impossible to meet all those expectations from other people and even yourself and that the word ‘should’ is the most dangerous word you can ever say to yourself.
REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.
Downhill was pretty easy but I was shook up after all those expectations, they just get right in the heart of a person and jerk around on strings you don’t even know you have. You wish you didn’t care, but you care. You always care.
On the downhill slope was my friend Jill with a man crisis. I am adept with this and listened for a bit but didn’t slow down. “It will work out” I called as I descended into the canyon depths – the Canyon always gets me.
The Canyon of really terrible memories.
It’s a shadow forest where no light ever gets through and it’s far larger and scarier than I would like to admit and although I can dodge many things in life and on an obstacle run this canyon always threatens to overtake me no matter where I’m at or what I’m doing. I’ve dealt with it so many, many times and it never seems to get better unless I can find the rope that leads out. I feel like I’m shrinking becoming smaller with each step I take and unsure of myself.
The forest slopes down into a canyon and then down into caverns, getting deeper, muddier and inescapable.
Usually I can find the rope and avoid the quagmire, but not today. Today I’m lost in one of the caverns and hanging from a low ceiling are the old family narcissists I haven’t talked to in decades and I slow down enough I get dirty fast and feel that I’m sinking.
First they start with a grandiose declaration of their greatness and superiority in all things. They sure do sell it. I don’t even doubt it. They sure do sound smarter, tougher, more successful and better than anyone else in the world. I nod, I agree with them, I’ve always agreed – ‘you are the best, okay’. I don’t even question if they’re brilliant why are they hanging down in a subteranean cavern isolated with their self-congratulatory bruhaha and never getting anything done….they smile and suck a person in, you feel like you’re best friends and you’re basking in their light for a half second.
The other shoe falls as soon as they map out every insecurity, beguiling the weak points in the human psyche. They politely point out I’m an ingrate, a malfunctioning idiot they barely tolerate, my ideas are flawed, my identity a joke, my appearance laughable, my hobbies below contempt, nomatter what I might acheive in life they know I’ll always be a FAILURE — but — BUT, they alone have the sure super power to endure how awful of a person I am … and for that I OWE them. I am responsible for them. I need to stop what I’m doing and carry out a long list of tasks they have for me and if I don’t I’m a bad person.
This wouldn’t be happening to me if I wasn’t so flawed….
I get caught because the family narcissists know my weak spots and they know my past and they use abject shame as a weapon to beat me down and at first I think, eh’ that’s just old so-and-so they don’t mean it… I make a series of excuses for their behavior, their contempt and their evil. I look down and am already bleeding. How did that even happen?
When you make an excuse for other people’s evil – you bleed.
Never, ever listen to narcissists. The steal futures. The more souls they harvest the deeper their cavern. The narcissists are people who have failed the obstacle run at Black Lake.
I feel guilty, I still feel like I should be an obedient doormat to all their bullshit irregardless of the years of abuse and harm and somehow it’s all my fault. Damn their gaslighting power was off the charts. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if I just did a few things for them…maybe if I stuck around I could clean the mess they’ve made up, I could make it all better, show them a better way…
Then I start to remember a few friends of mine, Norm who would show up at my office late Friday afternoon when things were quiet and discuss optics. I still have a photo he took on my wall. Everything I know about photography really starts with what Norm taught me. Norm was an expert in physics but he never bragged about any accomplishments or about where he was from or his career – I never really found out much but suspected he might work with the military in some capacity. In many ways maybe Norm was the smartest person I had ever met. When I thought about Norm and his big heart for reaching out to a nobody like me and teaching me….the Narcissists started to look small. (Are any of these Narcissists as smart or well spoken as Norm? Not by a long shot….)
I remembered my first real boss Ed, who took a chance on hiring me and how supportive he had been and an all around great person. Ed the incredible leader. He never had to put down people, make them feel shamed or small. He was a big enough person that everyone had a seat at his table…but I felt like the Narcissists wouldn’t want be around Ed, that as smart and accepting as he was they would be…uncomfortable. The Narcissists looked even smaller…
I kept thinking of all the amazing people I had gotten to know over the years, and really they outnumbered the narcissists to a great degree and when I think of them I can’t hear the narcissists. I find the rope, the rope left by good people and I climb right on up and it leads back out into the clear sunshine again.
As I think of all the amazing people who have been in my life helping me get away from a terrible situation I say, “thanks guys, I love you” I say for the millionth time. I hear my friends voices as I move away from the rope, some no longer with us, but they’ll always be with me and I’ll always love them. There is good in the world. I am so grateful for my friends and people I love that it burns away the darkness, burns off the ‘shoulds’ and the sounds of the complaining crypt of narcissists. It’s time to keep moving. I realize I don’t want to be worthy in the narcissists eyes, I want to be worthy of the really good people who helped me along the way. I have a job to do in the world and I’ll miss it if I stay mired.
As I get back into a run I hear a final call from the Narcissists, “you’ll be back, you are one of us. You were born to this, you will always be one of us.” The words snake down my back like ice water off a glacier.
Hiroprophants
This part of the trail starts to repeat variations of challenges. A big tempting table of treats – not donuts this time though. “100 calorie snack tray!” or “CHIA everything!” or “handfuls of nuts!” Yeah yeah yeah — I know this racket and steer clear.
I was actually hungry at this point though but had a banana in my bag and brought it out for a quick snack while on the run, but it drew in the ‘Hiroprophants,”
“That banana will make you fat – you need to get yourself into Ketosis missy!” Said a burly dude chewing on some meat.
“29 bananas a day will make you the best runner!” Said a very grim scrawny woman with a ratted out pony tail.
“You need to skip that nanner altogether and try intermittent fasting, don’t worry I swear there will be zero muscle lost!” Said an overweight Asian looking fellow.
“No fat – I am okay with that banana but the fat you eat is the fat you wear!” An older speckled man said….I thought to myself, pretty sure Pritikin coined that phrase and you’ve stolen it….but I wasn’t about to get into a discussion with the Hiroprophants.
This went on longer than I could say, “my thyroid might be toast – but eating nothing but 5lbs of broccoli and kale per day is the way!” Said a very skinny lady with pronounced osteoporosis.
I’m not saying any of them were right or wrong. I had no idea, but they all wanted me to follow them on a different path, but it wasn’t the running trail and it wasn’t the path I was on. No time for diet cults, I tipped my water bottle to them (some shouted at me that the BPA would kill me) but on I ran.
This lead right into the woodsy area of labeling everything either right or wrong. But I had already dodged the diet cults and the urge to do just that so I ran on.
RIGHT ARM TATTOO SAYS:
“Trust In Your Inner Dopeness”
So I had followed the path so far but the final obstacle is always self-doubt. I knew I followed the trail and did my best to follow it – but should I have? Maybe I should have stuck it out with just puppies or donuts or really wallowed around in the forest of memories. I spend so much of my time painting and following my passion, but shouldn’t I get a “real” job? Do something “worthwhile” with my life? Maybe I should have been a nurse weak immune system be damned. Or maybe clean houses despite the fact I hate to clean.
I read my Right Arm, “Trust In Your Inner Dopeness” — I run along part of the trees, the wind, the blue sky and ambient sound of the waves. Someday I’ll just merge right into them like I never existed but for today, for right at that second I was running the trail and part of that harmony and rhythm of each step was doing what I was meant to do, and there was never a time in my life when I wasn’t an artist.
My family is my heart. Running is the Path & Strength. Art is my purpose and my soul. Just when I had solidified my answer….
“You need religion!” Someone steps out of the trail to say and there is a crowd of more cultists.
But it holds no sway at all, because I’m where I’m supposed to be doing what I’m supposed to do.
“God as a purpose for you!” Someone shouts in my ear – but I have my purpose.
TRUST IN YOUR INNER DOPENESS
Trusting oneself is always the final test – after that you get a medal. It’s so cheap too. Looks like they could at least get a custom ribbon with the date, but they create the medals from aluminum foil balls and litter that washes up on the beach.
It took a long time to figure out how to hack that obstacle run which is why I had
Remember Who You Are and
Trust in Your Inner Dopeness
Tattooed on my forearms — you’re always going to need to understand those two fundamentals to make it through the unannounced obstacle run at Black Lake nestled in Cape Disappointment.
