How running cured my anxiety – and a broken heart
When my marriage ended, I realised that a lifetime of anxiety had left me unable to cope. Then I pulled on some old leggings and started jogging…
I once heard a story about a couple in a restaurant who ate in total silence for over an hour. When coffee came, the husband whispered something to the wife, who hissed back: “It’s not the coffee, it’s the last 25 years.” A slow crumbling like that would be pretty appalling. But when you’re given the surprise approach, the moment of impact feels brutally physical. Someone stands across from you, looks directly into your eyes and tells you they are leaving you, they no longer love you, they have found someone else, you are not enough, and you think: “Oh, so this is the moment I am going to die. I can’t possibly get through this.”
As I lay on the floor of my own sitting room, watching my husband’s feet walking quickly towards the door, I knew that the end of my marriage, after less than a year, would bring unbearable sadness, awkward questions, terrible embarrassment. I even knew that, with the right coping skills, it might be OK in the end. But I also knew something else: at 29, unlike most adults, I had no coping skills.