Endurance.

Quite a number of years ago I saw a therapist who had a good reputation and was very expensive; something we are lead to believe goes hand in hand. I saw her for about a year before I believed my conclusion that she wasn't a good fit for me. I tried to dialogue with her about my perspective of therapy, where there is a conversation within the relationship about the relationship, but she remained steadfast in her psychoanalytic point of view and our discussions about a subject or topic would become circular, a closed system, and only about my feelings, never about context. She taught me more about how it feels to be on the other side of the "dominant cultural belief" in that she would hand out comments that were, for me, cultural, not personal, and then would not entertain any discussion about the matter.

Yesterday I dragged/walked myself up Tioga Pass for the 30th annual Tioga Pass Run, along Highway 120. There were 101 participants this year, more runners than walkers and a whole lot of cars, motorcycles, and huge RV's "sharing" the road. I struggled more this year than last, at least I think this is true, partly because I didn't train as much and partly because I got it in my head that it was too hard for me to do and lead myself to believe I could quit at mile 6 and then again at mile 9. I knew I wouldn't (so did you) but I spent an awful lot of time thinking I could or would. 12.4 miles and 3200' of elevation gain. It's not easy. I thought of this therapist, Jane, somewhere around mile 7, because we had once had a one sided conversation about that very area (mile 7) when I had come in just after riding my bike up Tioga Pass and told her of the struggle. It was one of a handful of times I realized she didn't understand me, and would not see it as a cultural difference. I'd come in proud and feeling accomplished for having pushed through the struggle; she reflected that I was "immature" for having chosen to struggle at all.

The culture is of the endurance athlete. There are many of us out there. Any event I do to, perhaps a century (100 miles of cycling) or at a half marathon (13.2 miles of running/walking/crawling), there are always a lot of participants. Some of these events are in their 30th or even 40th year. There we are, a large mass of nervous people who've spent hours upon hours, most of which are solo, in a bike seat or out on a trail, waiting for the event to begin. The events themselves are a big deal, but it's the hours and days of training that make the athlete.

At any rate, I left therapy after it became clear Jane wasn't going to help me with some of the things that came up in my head while I was cycling (which I was doing at the tune of around 300+ miles per week back then). I'd come in for a session after doing the Davis Double (203 miles on a Saturday), and wanted to talk about how, during the last 30 miles of the ride, in the flats, I'd been cruising along at an average of 18-19 mph, and kept saying in my head, over and over, "I can't do this, I can't do this." Well, of course, I was doing it, and riding at a good clip for having just finished 170 miles of hills. I wanted help understanding why I might be saying, "I can't" when I was. Jane, instead, wanted me to talk about "why you do things that are so hard." "I'm an endurance athlete," wasn't considered a proper answer and though she wouldn't tell me if she'd ever done anything like this (of course) she didn't seem to be a person who knew a bike seat or a trial for more than, say, a cruise around the block.

Okay, so it's a legitimate question, right?, why do I do things that are so hard? But it's also a legitimate answer, "endurance athlete." Still, she wanted to pathologize a part of my identity and I wanted to get at the reason for the "can't." It was a classic case of being viewed from the mainstream notion of "normal" and having the result be that my behavior was pathological, abnormal. What we were never able to get to was my point of view that her seeing me from her psychological belief of "normal" is a cultural point of view, not a given. And so, to maintain my identity, to keep myself from taking on the pathology if you will, I had to leave.

I thought of this time in Jane's office yesterday when I was really struggling and felt like maybe I didn't have the endurance to to it, to get myself to keep walking up that one steep and unforgiving "hill." Right about then a runner went by me and said, "this is so freaking hard, I wish one of those cars would just hit me so I could get this over with," and I felt right at home.