Growing up.

It's funny, growing up.  Just when you think it's over, that you're a grown-up now, something new happens and you realise you're probably still just a kid, really.

I've never properly lost a friend, until recently.  Obviously I've had friends that I'm no longer really friends with, but that's mainly been due to either growing apart or moving away.  And I've never really lost someone who I expected to be around forever.  It's always been people I wasn't too fussed about.

Anyway, recently I've lost a friend.  I'd have called her a best friend, actually, but she obviously didn't feel the same way.  Someone who's been there through good and bad, laughed until we cried and held me when I was sad.  I'd like to think I've done the same for her, but perhaps she doesn't see it that way.  I suppose we've always been different in lots of ways, but we've always laughed about it, always seen the ways we're similar as more important.

A few months ago I realised I hadn't been hearing from her so often.  And that when I had it was because I'd been pestering her, rather than because she'd bothered to get in contact with me.  No problem, this friend had gone off the radar before, I'd just send her a message telling her how much I missed her and did she want to meet up soon.  So I sent the message, she read it, but I never got a reply.  Then I started to notice things, on Facebook and from people we knew.  The friend going to parties, or having parties and not inviting me.  Ditching on me and then meeting up with other people.  Messages through the grapevine that she was "happy to hang out with me" as long as my boyfriend wasn't there.  That's the only clue I have for why she's disappeared.  And it seems like such a small, petty reason so disappear that I can't help but feel that there must be something more to it.  I just don't know what it could be.

I'm not writing this to bitch the friend out, or to question her reasons for cutting me out of her life.  I'm just...writing.  Knowing I've upset her somehow, and being able to do nothing about it, feels awful.  It's like at school, when everyone suddenly turns against you, and you don't know why.  To begin with you keep trying to make everyone like you again, but after a while you just give up and get on as best you can.  At least at school though, there was an ending in sight.  I knew that one day I would get out into the big wide world, where I had hundreds of friends and stuff was settled by talking about it, not by the silent treatment.

I guess maybe this post is just me trying to make sense of things.  Because honestly, at the moment I feel like my heart has been fucking broken.  I'd pretty much do anything to make it right, but I can't because I don't know what I need to do. I've never really been dumped (except for once, when I was 16, by text...not that I'm bitter), but I guess this is what it feels like.  I miss her every day.  Something funny will happen and I'll want to tell her about it, then remember that I can't.  I'll feel sad and know that she's the only one who can make me snap out of it.  We have so much water under the bridge between us that I never thought we'd grow apart, but now we have.  As melodramatic as it sounds, it feels like a part of me has died.

If the friend is reading this, I hope she feels the same way.  I hope she send me a text, or gives me a call.  Even if it's just to tell me why she suddenly hates me.  I hope we can sort something out.

My Weekend and The Challenges of Running and Partying Effectively.

In lots of ways, last Friday night wasn't much different from a normal Friday night, for me.  I left the house at about 9:30pm and didn't return until 8am Saturday morning, having not had any sleep in between.  Unusually though, my Friday night plans didn't contain alcohol or unsuitable boys.  They did involve little white pills, but they were only Pro-Plus.  They also featured a pub, a group of noisy Runner Birds and a serious amount of microwave jacket potatoes.  I am now the potato microwaving queen.

For those of you who don't know what the fuck I'm on about yet, I spend my Friday night marshalling at Mud Crew's Arc of Attrition; a 100 mile foot race along the Cornish Coast path, from Coverack to Porthtowan.  Yep.  100 miles.  Makes my ACC adventure look like the Race For Life.  

Now, I am not the sanest person I know.  I'm pretty accepting of weirdness.  But to run 100 miles in one go takes a special kind of crazy.  In no other situation could you expect to encounter bright orange board shorts, trench foot and a man known only as Papa Ferret all in the same place, without anyone batting an eyelid.  But encounter them I did and, despite the complete mentalness of the race and its competitors, I left feeling completely humbled by the level of commitment and hardcoreness it takes to even train for this kind of race, let alone finish it.

I'll admit it now: I haven't been running much lately.  In fact, today is the first day I've run since sometime in the middle of October.  To begin with I had a bit of a twinge in an old injury and I used this as an excuse to slack off, which meant partying more and sleeping less.  After a while it just seemed like too much effort to get my trainers on again.  It's torture running with a hangover anyway.

Ever since I started running, I've found the balancing act between training, partying and boring shit that I have to do (work, eating, sleeping, cleaning) really hard.  I love to run.  I love getting out on the trails with my music and being completely alone.  I love feeling fit and full of endorphins.  But I love partying as well.  I love to drink and dance and not come home until the early hours.  I love being with my friends who don't run and lying in bed eating pizza all of Sunday.  If I didn't have to do all the boring bits, I think the two things would go together fine.  I could party every night, sleep until lunch and then run in the afternoons.  Apparently though, I have Other Responsibilities, and that's where the problems start.  How can you get out for your long run on a Sunday morning when you're still not sober from the night before?  How can you pay for cross-training classes when all your money goes on pizza and whiskey?  How can you even begin to fit in all the fun stuff you want to do when you have to work 30 hours a week?  And yes, I get Mondays off.  And no, it's still not enough time.

Anyway.  In my post-run smugness this afternoon, while I was whinging about my first world problem with my Mum (who, by the way, appears to have her run-work-party balance down) I remembered I'm entered for Mud Crew's next mental event - The Dark.  10 night time miles around the Lanhydrock Estate near Bodmin.  I deferred last year in an attempt to save my poor, jaded tendons for the London Marathon, which means I got entered automatically for this year... Oops.  I really fancied it last year, mainly because I like glow paint and neon stuff and running in the dark seems like a good excuse to crack out both, so it would be a shame to waste my place just because I'm feeling lazy at the moment.  Unnatural as it sounds, I could even schedule my long(er - I refuse to run more than 15 miles) runs on Mondays, when nothing's doin', because everyone else is at work.  Or maybe not... Actually even thinking about that is upsetting my training plan OCD.  

So I guess I'm back to the run/party balancing act.  Considering there's a JD and coke sat next to me while I'm writing this, and considering the look of despair on The Boyfriend's face at the thought of me getting up early to run at the weekends, I'm not sure how well this is going to go.  If my boss is reading this, then an extra paid day off a week wouldn't go amiss.  If a generous millionaire is reading, I wouldn't say no to being paid what I'm earning now just to drink and run and write about it.  Until one of these things happens, I'll just have to comfort myself with the thought that I only have to train for 10% of the distance the runners at the Arc covered over the weekend.  And I KNOW that most of them like a drink or ten.