Stuck in Mud

Yesterday afternoon Paul and I ran the 15th Annual US Marine Corps Ultimate Challenge Mud Run. It was a 4.2-mile all-terrain race with 30 obstacles. In just one ¾-mile stretch we faced ten culvert obstacles, two sets of "stairway to heaven" ladder climbs (each 7-15' high), and a mud hole with fallen log obstacles we had to go over and under. We climbed rope ladders and cargo nets, swung across muddy bogs on rope swings, and summited countless 30-45% incline plateaus. Paul had to run the last 100 yards with a twisted ankle while bearing me in a fireman’s carry.

Compared with the last six weeks of my life, it was all a piece of cake.

After giving up a job I loved in Corpus Christi, moving halfway across the country, and locking myself into a 30-year mortgage on a new home, I started my brand new teaching job.

To say I hated it would minimize the experience. It wasn’t like a film that, despite rave reviews, was disappointingly ill-conceived. I didn’t hate it like I hate people who throw burning cigarettes out of their moving vehicles or Sarah Palin. It wasn’t simply intolerable.

The job was just wrong for me - so wrong that I rapidly descended into a depression deeper and darker than any depth I’d ever previously explored. I had full-blown, lung-crushing panic attacks nightly. I was counting the days till the end of the school year, gasping in a screechy voice that tried desperately to sound amused, “Only 189 school days to go!”

On September 2 ("Only 181 days to go!"), despite threats that I’d lose my certificate and be unable to teach again in South Carolina, I walked out. I spent three days prone on my living room floor, surviving on Triscuits, Kleenex and every episode of “Project Runway.” I tried (and failed) to meditate. I tried (and failed) to pray. I tried (and failed) to focus on the positive.

Okay, I actually succeeded in focusing on the positive, but as there was only one local positive - Paul - and he was the reason I’d moved to Columbia, and it was dawning on me that I am 42 years old and have made an unfortunate habit of quitting jobs I like and moving great distances for the love of men with whom things never worked out, I was having a hard time seeing this as a positive.

I think I had a midlife crisis. I was so delirious from the sleep deprivation and the gut-wrenching anxiety and the career suicide I’d committed that it’s hard to pinpoint the specifics of those agonizing 60 hours. I’m pretty sure I excavated every decision I’ve made since falling in love the first time 25 years ago and questioned its wisdom. I re-examined my failed marriage and beat myself mercilessly for it all over again. I got out pictures of old boyfriends and asked myself why, why, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY, every time things were going well in my life I screwed it all up for a man.

I actually wrote in my journal: “It’s time to unlearn your wild, childlike optimism, Debra!”

And I think that’s when I snapped out of it. Wait a minute. Since when is being optimistic a negative?

Finally I pulled myself up off the floor, took a long hot shower, put on a decent outfit and drove down to Human Resources, where I somehow managed not only to convince them not to fire me but to, in fact, give me a job I could love.

Et voila! I have that job.

So now that I’m so (relatively quickly) on the other side of Deep Wallow, what function did all that angst serve?

Here's three possible answers. If you have more, please post a comment.

1) I appreciate the job I wound up in a lot more after being in the un-doable job. In fact, I might even love it.

2) I learned you don’t have to be a little kid to enjoy playing in mud. You just have to decide to enjoy it.

3) By remaining wildly optimistic despite a quarter century of failed relationships, I finally met someone as madly positive as I am. One who, among other things, enjoys getting muddy and climbing over stuff as much as I do.