A feeling of genuine happiness: Leeds Abbey Dash Part Six

I ran the Leeds Abbey Dash yesterday. For the 6th time. Last year I ran it in 49:17. In many ways speed was all I cared about last year. This year remaining uninjured has become more important than speed.

To give you some idea of relative speeds, a week before last year's Abbey Dash I ran a 5k in under 23 minutes. This year it's been 6 months since I ran one in less than 24 and a half.

So, to run a 10k PB yesterday would have defied all logic. Even to get sub 50 seemed a long shot, but with my friend Kerrie offering to pace me, that's what I was aiming for.

We decided we'd try for 49 minutes and see how it went but our more realistic Plan B was sub 50.

I got over excited at the start, and started running ahead of Kerrie. 4:40 for the first k. My ego was telling me to go for the improbable 49 minutes. By 3k I knew that was a mistake. Kerrie had said if you're doing it right, it's meant to hurt but I'd gone too far.

14 minutes in I wasn't just in the pain cave I was the Chilean miners stuck in their mine. I was the 13 Thai schoolboy football players miles underground with flood waters rising.

I panicked. I thought Kerrie would be better off leaving me to it, and I told her she could if she wanted.

I thought I'd blown it and I had no idea how to make it through another 7k, through another 35 minutes. I'd entered a nether world of pain where I just wanted it to stop.

Rewind a year. After last year's Abbey Dash I was walking along Street Lane in Roundhay and I heard someone calling my name. It was Kerrie from the doorway of Banyan, she saw me go past and asked me to join her and some other Roundhay Runners for drinks. It was the first day I'd properly been out socially with them. It was from that day that they started to become friends and not just people I ran with.

Exactly a year later, here I was with Kerrie again. Let's just slow down for a bit, she said, get things under control. So we did. For a couple of k.

At the 5k point at the Abbey it really helped that other friends from Roundhay Runners were there, cheering me on. I hoped they couldn't see how bad I was feeling but of course they could.

Somehow, in the second half of the race I managed to settle down a bit. The impossible simply became difficult.

I felt myself coming back to life. And yet, at the point where Kerrie said, only 7 minutes of running left, I didn't believe I had 7 more minutes in me. When she said only 3 more minutes I felt the same.

It seemed to me that only when I crossed the finish line and I had actually finished did I really believe I would finish.

Our finish time: 49:59. By exactly one second we got what we were aiming for.

I was 42 seconds outside a PB. But it really didn't matter. It wasn't my fastest run, but it was one of my best.

At the start Kerrie said I'll do the pacing, you do the running' I made life more difficult for myself by not trusting in that enough at the start, but the main thing was just to keep going.

Too often I'm a skeptic, a pessimist, my own worst enemy. Someone who's anxious and afraid, who doubts himself, who makes life harder than it needs to be. On the day I didn't quite believe in myself enough. At 3k my internal monologue was trailing me through the dirt, like someone in a western who's been shot but is attached by one foot to a horse which is still running. But the external monologue of a friend, running with me, who calmly talked me though it and who wouldn't leave me behind when I wanted to leave myself, carried me through.

We went for burgers after the run to a place called Almost Famous. With the race now finished, I said to the people around me that I was experiencing a 'feeling of genuine happiness'.  Chris said to me that's what I should call this blog post. So, there it is.

Some people I talk to think running sounds nuts. And sometimes it is. Running can be the best I ever feel or the worst I ever feel. On a 10k it's usually both.

If this story has a hero, then because it's my story, I would say that it's Kerrie. But that's not the whole story. We were in it together and I did my part too.

Postscript. If you care about such things, here is my race according to Strava. Quite an accurate reflection of how I was feeling.

Jonathan 2.0. Finding myself at Morag's party

When I was 7 (around 1975) I wrote a story called ‘Martian Maroons’. It was (as you can no doubt tell from the title!) about some people being stranded on Mars. My teacher Miss Hodgson asked me what a maroon was. I said it’s someone who is marooned somewhere. She said that’s not a real word, and she crossed out my title and called it ‘Marooned on Mars’.

I said 'Miss, you may have made it grammatically correct, but you’ve also ruined it. It sounds all wrong now. You can’t just put words in any order, you know, they have to sound right!'

Despite ruining my story, she did also say to me ‘When you grow up, you should become a writer’. My oldest friend Shelagh from primary school is always telling me that too.

Last Saturday in the year 2023, I went to my friend Morag’s 50th birthday party. She’s a friend from the running club. I went there with other running friends (Kerrie, Megan, Chris, James, Eleanor amongst others) It was the swankiest party I’ve ever been to. It wasn’t so much a party as a trip to another world. I was having trouble following the sat nav on the way there and I think I must have accidentally gone down a portal into another dimension.

Morag said there was a tee-pee in the garden. That sounds small to me. When I arrived, it was less a tee-pee, not even a marquee, it was as if the circus had come to town. It was the kind of big top you can see for miles around.

Earlier on Saturday, I’d got myself in a mental tangle trying to organise something which didn’t need organising. A trip to York parkrun. I kept getting stressed about the logistics of getting 10 grown-ups from Leeds to York and having breakfast after. As if I was playing 3D chess.

Anyway, I may have used up all my nervous energy in the morning trying to be in control of something which didn’t need controlling, because I felt quite relaxed by the evening.

I dressed in a Hawaiian shirt given to me by my brother, which I’ve never worn, I had some flowers for my hair, and some glasses with yellow lenses. Morag also had a box of hats. With the yellow glasses on instead of my own, and in a fancy shirt and wearing a Mexican hat or a policewoman’s hat, or a red sparkly bowler hat, I suddenly felt like I’d accessed a different version of myself. The boring person I think I sometimes am with my not very interesting job and my self-consciousness about the way I move was hidden behind a disguise. And the songs were mostly by Abba, so I know the words. Songs that are mostly from the 70s, like an earlier version of me also is.

For one night only, those things I think about myself; having a boring job, and being anxious, they were just concepts. Mental constructs I’ve acquired. Stories I tell myself about who I am. But on Saturday, I was someone else entirely.

Through the fake glasses, I couldn’t see properly, so I couldn't properly analyse other people's facial expressions. If anyone had a look on their face saying ‘Look at that idiot’, I had no way of knowing.

At one point, Kerrie told someone that I was miles out of my comfort zone, and I thought ‘Yes I am’, but that’s because the people I want to be with are here. And if I don’t go, I won’t see them. The next day Megan said maybe my comfort zone is expanding.

Morag introduced me to a few people, but when she did, she mostly described me in the context of things I’ve written. And it occurred to me later, ‘who you are isn’t your job, it’s what you’re known for’. Other people throughout the night came up to me and said ‘I loved that blog post you wrote about the Otley Run’. James told me how relatable he’d found it reading something I wrote about joining the running club.

I always think of myself as failed potential, as someone who was supposed to be a writer but who has never had the discipline to do it, as someone who was supposed to do lots of things but hasn't, And as someone for who, the things I did instead of the things I should have, didn’t always work out. But all that is just mental projections. Who I am really is maybe not for me to say.

I don’t write for a job, I don’t even write all that often. I only do it when ‘I can’t NOT do it’. When there are things that happen to me in life that I have to share, because keeping them inside would make me burst. Because I think I’ve seen an aspect of something that no-one else can.

Anyway, I had a dream last night. I was back in primary school. It was the 70s again, and I was back in West Garforth Junior School. The old wooden building, the one that doesn't exist anymore because it got burnt down in the 80s, the one that existed before the school that's now called Strawberryfields.

Shelagh was there, and so was Miss Hodgson. At this point, Morag hadn’t long ago been born, and some of my other friends were a long way off their parents even meeting.

In the dream, I’d just written a story called ‘Martian Maroons’. Miss Hodgson said 'I’m not sure you can call your story that’. I said ‘You know that Mars is the Red Planet? Well, in the light there, the astronauts space suits look dark red, a colour not unlike Burgundy. Because of that colour, they've decided to call themselves Maroons'

“Oh I thought it was because they were marooned there?” She said.

'No, that's just a coincidence'.

'I like it', she said. 'When you grow up, you should become a writer'.

I was so excited I could barely get my reply out.

‘But I did, Miss, I did!’

'I did grow up, and when I did, I went to a party at my friend Morag’s. In the year 2023. It was the fanciest party you could ever imagine. And she introduced me to her other friends and told them about all the things I’d written. This Jonathan that’s here now, that’s Jonathan 1.0. In the future, I’m going to be a writer, and I’m going to go running and to parties with friends, I’m going to wear silly hats and glasses I can’t see through, and I’m going to dance like no-one is watching. I’m going to be Jonathan 2.0.

Miss Hodgson said ‘That sounds a lot like a dream’.

And I said ‘Some dreams come true, Miss!’

Compare the Meerkat: Seeing and being seen at the Zoo

Last Saturday I went to the human zoo (Headingley during the Otley Run)

This week I went to an actual zoo, one with animals. Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire.

I went for the monkeys but I was unexpectedly taken aback by three things I hadn't expected. A blue butterfly, a black Rhino and some Meerkats.

I did see some primates. I saw a chimp that the person next to me said looked really sad. I thought he was maybe just thinking. Possibly we were both right and he was thinking sad thoughts. I also saw a black spider monkey collecting up pieces of aubergine like a greedy person arriving first at the all you can eat buffet.

There was a sign on one of the animal enclosures which said something like 'Don't bang on the glass. You'll see more if you just remain quiet, watch and wait'. How much of human life is us just impatiently banging on the glass? I wondered

The butterfly and Rhino I saw were at opposite extremes. One was delicate and floating, a beautiful luminescent blue but incredibly fragile; it maybe only lives a few weeks and not even that if it gets swatted by a scared child. Having seen them fly around me, I can understand why Muhammad Ali used to boast that he could float like one.

The Rhino on the other hand looked like every movement was an effort of will and determination. He took longer to get himself in a lying down position than I do with my creaking middle aged frame. Although he had two horns, he could probably wouldn't need to gore me in a fight, he could just crush me. His body was massive, like he was carrying a car on his back. I was imagining the strain on his joints and whether he felt as heavy to himself as he looked.

On the day I went, all the zoo's big name attractions like the Gorillas and Tigers were asleep or hiding (hopefully hiding rather than escaped in the Tiger's case, Jurassic Park alert!) With the tigers missing, I liked the meerkats best.

They were the ones who had properly understood their jobs. Maybe they're just better at being around people since they started making car insurance adverts.

The meerkats uniquely seem to have realised that the point of a zoo is not for us to look at them, it's for them to look at us. The never-ending procession of humans with their packed lunches and snart phones and overpriced ice creams pushing small humans in pushchairs, constantly passing by for their entertainment. Based on the sunshine and showers weather situation on Monday meerkats must think that human behaviour consists largely of taking raincoats on and off.

For meerkats, there's always something worth seeing, and it's important to be able to see it from high up so that you can summon your friends if something interesting is going on.

A lot of the animals at the zoo looked fairly bored and largely underwhelmed. The meerkats look like they're constantly operating at the optimum level of whelmed-ness.

They are brilliant at just paying attention. And so a kind of stand-off developed between me and one meerkat in particular where I paid attention to him and he wouldn't stop watching me. It became like the World Staring Championships. We were having an attention off, a game of attention chicken.

Parents I overheard were often urging their children to notice things, maybe to get more value for money. Just tell them to be more like a meerkat, I thought.

I felt like the meerkat and I started peering directly into each other's souls. It wasn't a Pixar movie though, it was reality, so the meerkat never actually spoke.

But if he had, he might have said:

'Never stop being curious. Life is better that way. Just be still and pay attention, all the answers are there if you just look'

Maybe I shouldn't compare myself to a meerkat. Or to a butterfly or a rhino. But what's the point of having a supposedly bigger brain if you can't imagine or wish for things.

I wish I could move with the lightness of a butterfly, especially when I'm battling gravity going uphill on a run. I wish I could be more like the Rhino and accept uncomplainingly whatever it is I need to carry. And I wish I could pay attention to everything that's going on and not get lost in a world of thoughts, like the meerkat seems to be able to do.

 

The Otley Run: It's not a run and it's not in Otley.

The last time I went on a pub crawl in Headingley was 1986. I think in those days it was 5 pubs at the most. We used to call it the Headingley Mile. Woodies, the Three Horse Shoes, the New Inn, the Original Oak and the Skyrack. 5 pints at most and maybe a Chicken Korma at the Curry House near the Skyrack. Starting at around 8 pm. Last bus home at 11.

37 years later. WTF?

Now it's called the Otley Run, even though it is neither a run nor is it in Otley. It should be called the Leeds Fancy Dress World Queuing Championships. There are 15 pubs and if you make it that far alive it finishes at the Dry Dock near the University.

Even at 2pm on a Saturday, there are bouncers on the doors .It took us half an hour just to get in the door of Woodies, us being me and a group of mostly young people from the Roundhay Runners, most of them dressed as Foxes.

The euphoria of making it inside Woodies soon dissipated when you realised a) there was another half an hour queue for a drink. b) it had been better outside.

I eventually got settled with my first drink and found a seat when I heard 'Right, we're off now' 'Eh, I've just got comfortable'.

I'd been looking forward to going back to the New Inn (pub 3) as I spent most of my Friday nights there between ages of 16 and 18. There was no Challenge 25 in those days. There was barely Challenge 16. I went in there unchallenged to celebrate finishing my O levels.

I literally remember quiet nights in there in the 80s by the open fire, having actual conversations. No one had a phone. Maybe somebody would put a song in the juke box occasionally.

The inside of the New Inn at 3 o'clock on Saturday was like the scene of a ferry disaster. There was so much noise and pushing and shoving, and I couldn't see the cricket on TV because someone with an inflatable crocodile was standing in front of it .Also fighting for the lifeboats on this ferry were the cast of I'm a Celebrity, some golfers ,Hawaiians, minions, Ghostbusters, and football referees

I made brief eye contact with a disconsolate looking ninja turtle who looked a bit unsure of himself and then at everyone else who seemed to be loving it and I wondered how many people were hating it and just pretending to have fun.

I skipped the next pub (Headingley Taps) to go to Greggs for water, coffee, and a doughnut. They were playing shit local radio quite loud, but it was a relief. At one point, some cast members of Baywatch, an astronaut, and some Minions came in to fuel up on sausage bean and cheese melts. Next,

I literally punched the air with delight when the queue was too big at the Box to get in. Then when Becca the 28 year old doctor I was with got refused entry at Manahatta, I was positively jubilant. The bouncer said 'It's the Otley Run, we ID everyone'. Not me you don't, I didn't say. But then I probably looked like an overprotective dad trying to force his way in to reclaim a wayward child rather than an actual participant.

I found on the day, the only thing worse than queuing to get in places was actually getting in them.

The Skyrack wasn't too bad though. That's another one of my 80s favourites. We actually had time here to sit and have a chat. Mostly about shitting yourself while running. At one point I felt moderately attracted to someone dressed as a bottle of ketchup.

The Skyrack turned out to be my last pub. I wanted to regain use of my ear drums so went home at this point. By 8 pm, I was in pyjamas in a quiet room. The Otley Run carried on without me till about 2 am. Who had the stamina (or the money) for that. Not me!

It's not an age thing that I find noisy pubs and drunk people hard work. I felt similarly aged 17. And the pubs in Headingley are mostly full of young people. I envy them their energy and their hope.

People with their whole lives ahead of them who seem happy and carefree, and are looking ahead. A lot of my life is behind me now including the young me from the 80s. If I had a plan for how my life would work out, this isn't exactly it . But, if I could, would I like to go back to the New Inn circa 1986 and start all over again?

No, I don't think I would.

The thing I remember most about those evenings from the 80s are my friends and how much fun it was to hang out with them. 

And the thingI liked best about the present incarnation of the Otley Run was the young people I was out with on Saturday. Same as in the past I go to places that are a bit nuts because that's where people I like and who want to spend time with are going.

The Otley Run, also known as The Fancy Dress World Queuing Championships is a curious way to spend time with people, one that makes no sense at times, but ultimately the people are the best bit.

It's a different world now, a world of queues, bouncers, ID checks and people who've painted themselves yellow to look like the Simpsons.

But the people being the best bit hasn't changed.

Lost and Found: Tales from the Baggage Store

I ran the Leeds Half Marathon on Sunday. For me it was an intensely emotional experience which I am still trying to process. I wrote this down to try and help. 

There's a really short poem by Raymond Carver called Late Fragment. When I was sitting quietly for half an hour in the baggage reclaim at Headingley Stadium after the race on Sunday, it was this poem that came back to me. 

This is it. 

"And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth."

I ran past so many places on Sunday that are meaningful to me for different reasons and which connect me to Leeds but one place in particular was very special.

The place where my running club had decided to set up their supporters' tent was right outside Lawnswood Crematorium and Gardens of Remembrance. As it turned out, putting the tent there was exactly the right place for me. It's the place where my mum and dad's funerals took place and where their ashes were scattered. 

Even though it was 9 years ago for my mum and 49 years ago for my dad I still go up there sometimes to let them know how I'm getting on. It's not that I think they're still there but I don't have any better ideas of where to find them. There's no childhood home or other place which offers a better option. 

Last summer on what would have been my mum's 80th birthday I went up to Lawnswood. I don't always talk out loud to my parents but I did that day. I said to them that I know my life isn't going to plan at the moment but that I was working on it and to please stick with me as I'm not giving up and I didn’t want them to give up on me either.

A year ago I felt so low and so lost in life. I was a disappointment to myself at how my life was turning out, and I didn't know what to do or where to go next. Luckily one of the places I decided to go was Roundhay Runners.

I sometimes struggle to accept myself, my mistakes, imperfections and failures. I judge myself harshly for the things I get wrong, and I feel so sad about things from the past that I couldn't keep control of as they were falling apart. I take those failures personally. 

And that's why it's meant so much to me to see the pictures of myself from the weekend at the half marathon; looking so happy, so un-self consciously happy. Especially at Lawnswood, which is as close to my parents as I can be these days; being recognised and cheered on by so many people who know me and who have given me a place to belong during the last year. 

I'm fond of a saying which says. "Everything I have lost is everything I have gained". My mum used to say something similar. "When one door closes another opens". In my case the door that opened to me was the door to Roundhay Runners. 

On Sunday, their support was exactly what I needed and exactly where I needed it to be. They helped me to run my best race. Sometimes the past weighs heavily on me, like an old suitcase I can't put down but on Sunday there was nothing for me to carry. I left my baggage in the baggage store. After sitting quietly on my own for half an hour at the end with a Mars bar and a can of 0% beer, it felt a bit lighter when I picked it up again. 

I know one run can't fix everything. However fast I run, I never really leave anything behind. But on Sunday I got my (slightly less than) two hours in the Sun. While running through the streets of Leeds, cheered on by strangers but also more importantly by friends "I got what I wanted from this life."

Relax into your stress - A gradual move from pain to enjoyment

A few weeks ago I wrote something about why I run. At that point, in a time of crisis, running was a way of obliterating myself physically to give me some respite from my overthinking mind. To bring me back into the present moment and to stop me being swamped by sadness and anxiety.

At a time when other parts of my life had come apart, and I was full of self-doubt, with running I was trying to prove that in at least one thing, I can succeed. To salvage something out of the ashes.

At that point I mostly only enjoyed running after it was over. The relaxation was all in the recovery.

But trying so hard like that I was running like an ironing board on legs. The tin man before he got any oil. Tense, straining, anxious, restless, impatient.

Running in August. Mostly pain

When I got to the point by the end of August that my calf muscles felt ready to snap I realised I needed to calm down a bit.

Ten years ago I went on a cycling trip in India. One day I'd cycled all day and I was lost and couldn't find my accommodation and I was feeling quite frantic when I bumped into an English lady called Lorna picking up litter in the street. Apart from Dean who I was travelling with, hers was the first English voice I'd heard for a few days.

Meeting Lorna 

She told me to "relax into my stress'. I don’t know exactly what that means, but that phrase often comes back to me when I'm running. And I've thought of it often since the end of August.

You've probably heard stories of babies sometimes surviving car or plane crashes or falls out of windows. I've always believed this was because they've not aware of the danger so they don't tense up.

But I looked it up here. Babies can get stressed just like the rest of us but their sometime survival is more to do with biology then psychology. They're soft and light and squidgy. They don't get thrown about in the same way as heavier, more rigid people so they're more equipped for impact. And their lungs work better then older people's who have knackered theirs, so they have a better chance of still being able to breathe even when they're under the rubble of a collapsed building.

So since the beginning of September I decided to run more like a baby and less like the tin man  To be light and flexible and as if I’ve got new lungs (yes, I realise this analogy doesn't really work because babies can't run but just go with it). As it turns out, the closest you can get to having new lungs is to join a running club. Running interval sessions in particular is like taking them into The Repair Shop.

September - a state approaching enjoyment

And generally I've tried not to be so desperate and tense and impatient about everything. Not just running but also to stop worrying so much about forming new connections and relationships. Just to let things happen in their own time.

In the last two weeks I've equalled my two fastest ever patkruns times. During both those runs there were points where I was ready to tense up and I tried to remember to relax into that stress. To be soft and light like a baby.

Stats - Boring as shit to some people but practically what I live for!

Obviously a large part of running faster will be down to 3 months spent at the running club. And I still have the benefit of all those tensed up runs in July and August in the bank. I'm not saying it's all down to relaxing more. But recently I've just tried to stop trying so hard.

And in the last few weeks I've also noticed a shift in how I FEEL about running. I've started to enjoy it DURING as well as AFTER IT'S OVER. Part of this is down to getting fitter but it's also down to the people I run with now, whose company helps the miles fly by unnoticed.

Me in October - At a turning point (literally)

Babies are also famous for being full of wonder and curiosity about the world around them. For generally being interested in things. The more time I spend running and talking with other people and finding out about their lives, the easier it is to switch off my own inner monologue. And the more I go to different places and notice the world around me, the less time and attention I have left to think about ways that my life hasn't gone to plan.  Gradually, I'm learning to relax into my stress.

I'm not an idiot. I also know that part of all this is just adaptation, the way time works. The longer ago things happened, the easier they are to live with. The past is still there, and I haven't forgotten anything, but it's just not as heavy, it doesn't press on me with as much urgency. Like me when I run, it’s got softer and lighter on its feet.

How to organise your sock drawer: a filing system for the mind

I sometimes look for people in places where I’m not likely to find them. And if that sounds silly, maybe I should explain.

This picture has no relevance to the story. It's just for decoration.

I split up with my partner a few months ago. During the time we were together we went to hundreds if not thousands of places. Sometimes when I pass one of those places, I stop to look if she’s there. I know it’s not likely, but because I’ve seen her there before, I still look. It’s the right place, but at the wrong time.

For example, I regularly go past Leeds Art Gallery. We once met there for lunch in the Tiled Hall Café during my lunch break from work. I remember she sat in Dante’s corner, as she called it, and she was pleased to see me. Well, now every time I go past, I call in and look for her in the same corner. She’s never there, but even though it’s very faint, I can still feel an echo of that past meeting.

At the end of our relationship, in our last few interactions, she was hurt and upset with me. My memories of those last few meetings are painful to recall. But experiencing a brief echo of a past meeting where things were more positive helps to dilute that.

We experience our lives from a linear viewpoint, measured in days and years, and sometimes the ways things end is painful. But once events are in the past, I wonder, does it make any difference what order things happened in?

When events are recent and / or distressing, the memories of those events are like Pringles in a tube where you have to take the top one first, but as you move on, they become more like socks in a drawer, you can pull out whichever pair you want.

My relationship ended with stress and annoyance it also had countless moments that were full of joy and happiness. My hope is that as time moves on, it gets easier to view all those moments as equal, not just giving more weight to the latest, more painful ones. Even when a situation ends badly, that shouldn't diminish the happy moments that also once existed.

Einstein said that ‘the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion". One of my favourite passages from any book is from Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. It's one of my favourites because I hope it's true.

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever"

I don’t where my past relationship is now. But when I go to the Tiled Hall Cafe and hundreds of other places, I still feel a connection to it, an echo of past happiness. I can't change the past. But I can choose how to remember it. 

I may have to experience the present moment to moment,  stacking those moments one on top of the other like Pringles in a tube, But once those moments are in the past, I can take out whichever ones I most want to look at, no matter what order they were collected in. 

I'm not trying to pretend that difficult things didn't happen. Only that a horrible end doesn't have to ruin everything.

My best days, my good times and all my best moments 'always have existed, always will exist'

When all my socks are clean, and I've got a full drawer to choose from, there are some pairs I like better than others, and it's usually those I go to first. The ones I don't like so much are still in there, but I don't have to wear those if I don't want.