Lately, I have not been sleeping well. I mean, I have lacked sleep for most of my life, but lately it has gotten the best of me. And I know I have been better than this.

The strange thing is, I can still go through the next day just fine. Sometimes a little sleepy, yes, but otherwise functional. I suspect I mostly run on adrenaline. I wake up excited almost every day, thank God. It is a blessing, although perhaps not the most sustainable source of energy.

I am also currently training for a half marathon.

With absolutely no intention of bragging, I probably do not need this much training to finish 21 kilometre. With the training and races I have already done, I could most likely just push through on race day. But that is not really the point. I want to build the discipline and endurance. I want to go through the process properly.

And hell, it is such a commitment.

This is only my fourth week, but I think I have figured out the formula. A fulfilling training session is some rare combination of (A) good sleep, (B) proper nutrition, and (C) being in the right phase of your menstrual cycle. In other words, follicular. Very specifically, not luteal.

If your training menu looks like mine, with three runs and at least one strength session a week, you might get this perfect combination once a week, tops. Most sessions will feel just okay. A rather significant portion of them will feel like hell.

And through all of that, you still have to pass through it. You do it anyway.

Somehow, the past month has felt like this training plan spilling into real life.

Last week, my best friend began a new life with the person she loves. Next week, that new life will take her abroad. My OCD is very much acted out because I know it will change the beat of our friendship.

Around the same time, my housemate, my good friend, and someone who has become a dear sister to me was diagnosed with breast cancer.

In a professional setting, I had to let go of people I cared about. It was a decision I had very little power to change, but one I still had to be part of and carry out. In another month, I will have to say goodbye again, this time to perhaps the only person I can call a friend. Month of farewell is not done yet, I already got another news of my other best friend leaving end of year. And to top this, there was also a good amount of money I had to spend on something that was never meant to be my responsibility.

While I was doing my best to keep myself together, some narratives grew beyond my reach. There was a part of me that wanted to “correct the record,” and to make sure my side was heard. But then I realized some things do not become truer simply because they are louder.

And in the middle of all that, I ran my training anyway.

This is not a story about how strong I am. Or for anything, really. It is just a gradual realization of how running has simply become as much a metaphor for my life as it is part of my training.

I am losing things while still having so much. I am letting go while still desiring. Things leave, other things arrive, and sometimes both happen in the same breath.

Anyway that also reminds me….

In Murakami’s novels, the main characters are often strangely open to unconventional possibilities of the world. Talking cats, parallel realities, people disappearing into forests. But if you look closer, beneath all the strangeness, they carry some degree of loneliness. They long for a deeper kind of acceptance. They love the ordinary people around them, often quietly and imperfectly.

In retrospect, perhaps they resemble us more than we would like to admit (I’m not here to talk about Murakami as a person btw….), with all the darker desires we keep hidden, sometimes even from ourselves.