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."