60 days. 100 miles

 60 days. 100 miles. 

To understand why this is significant,  we (me included) have to understand how I got here in the first place.  

Warning deep stuff ahead!

Despite what many of you may see from me on twitch, I’m a pretty shy person who has struggled with poor self image and low self worth issues my whole life. I rarely feel worthy of peoples time and attention and I never feel I’m good enough at anything to be taken seriously.  This leads me to being very risk adverse and makes “putting myself out there” a constant battle.  On twitch,  I can turn the camera off anytime I can’t hide the pain or embarrassment I’m feeling or  if things are really bad, I can just turn the stream off and I’m safe.   But in the “real world” It doesn’t work like that so I am pretty introverted.

About 11 years ago, I decided to take a risk and move across the country to beautiful San Diego, California.  I needed a change and I didn’t want to get stuck in small town Maryland my whole life.   Once I got out here my brother and his wife roped me into their hobby of doing triathlons.  New City, New me right?  Get myself back into shape. Get to experience the beauties this city has to offer all while personally challenging myself to the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.  No better confidence builder and way to help me come out of my shell.   And it worked,  I felt strong, I felt bolder. This lead me to completing my first Half Ironman (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, 13.1 mile run)  at “Vineman 70.3” in Guerneville, CA in 2014.  An accomplishment that I’m still tremendously proud of to this day.  

This gave me the confidence to sign up to try and do my first ever Full Ironman race (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run) which was going to be Ironman Arizona.  The training was hard.  I wasn’t very fast so I didn’t have anyone to really train with from my inner circle so things got lonely.  Long hours on the bike, long sessions in the pool, long lonely runs.  I started to feel the burnout happening And then add in a love interest who made me feel like I was only wanted when they didn’t have anything better going on and the candle was gone.  My self-worth plummeted and I lost my edge.   I never made the starting line. 

This started a long descent to where I was 60 days ago.  If I had to describe what the descent has felt like is how It feels to be in a plane that’s landing but you can’t see the ground and the plane never lands…I just kept falling. I stopped caring about myself.  I wasn’t suicidal because if there’s one thing to know about me is that I hate being a burden and I never want to be the source of someone else’s pain.  Just the thought of leaving behind so much pain and so many unanswered questions for those that do genuinely love me was too much for that to ever be an option for me …but if death was coming I certainly wasn’t doing anything to stop it.

So what changed?

A few months ago my parents came out to town to visit for all our birthdays.  My health was not in a good spot.  I was the heaviest I’d ever been. And just simple things were beginning to be tough for me and I was honestly feeling like shit all the time.  I was riding in the car with my parents and they were dropping me off at my apartment and my mom asked me how I was doing health wise (which signaled to me they could tell I was struggling) and I answered as some of you who are close to me may know with the stock “I’m fine”.  My mom responded that she asks because I’m not very open and that she wasn’t sure what I do on a day to day basis.  I got out of the car and so did she to hug me goodbye and she looked at me and said “ I ask because I love you and I don’t want to lose you”. 

It hit me hard…even as I write this now it still hits me hard.  As I walked away, I lost it. What I didn’t really think about was my lack of care and lack of love for myself wasn’t self contained.  It was causing pain and stress for those around me as well and I hated myself for it.  I cried a lot which is hard for a guy like me to admit.  And then it was like my heart started to fight back.  I had closed myself off mostly.  Yeah we can be friends and I’ll be the jovial jokester but get in close to me? Good luck!  But as I described this to a friend it felt like my heart was reaching out.  My brain would normally and still to this day tries to beat my heart into submission but I couldn’t this time.  

I started to let people in, and the love and genuine care they showed for me made me want it and need it even more.  I started to think about all the missed opportunities I had to meet some of these people and how I would never take the opportunities to meet others in the future out of fear of judgement or embarrassment.  I didn’t want to continue to live this way anymore and the only way I knew how to fix it was to get moving.  I was sitting in my apartment at 1 am and I couldn’t take it. I put my shoes on and told myself I’m going to walk a mile no matter how hard it is.  So I did…and it was hard…and it was emotional but i felt some healing.  So I did it again and decided I’m going to walk at least a mile everyday and slowly build myself back up. Within days my heart started feeling better and the walks were my time to have tough conversations with myself and let out some of the emotions I had been holding in.  It was therapeutic.

I decided from day 1 I was going to post these walks, not as a way to brag about what I’m doing but as a way to hold myself accountable and to have others hold me accountable. I used my own fear of embarrassment against myself to force me to commit to this endeavor.  Boy would I look silly only posting 3 days of walks or how embarrassing for me if someone came into twitch and asked me how my walks are going only for me to have to tell them that I quit.  But something else happened I didn’t expect.  People started to message me publicly and privately that I was motivating them to get moving.  I never imagined I would have any impact on anyone else as this was as I’ve said several times a “selfish endeavor to fix myself” but the fact that I was making a impact on other people made me even more committed than I was before.

60 days, 100 miles, now what?

I keep going.  One foot in front of the other.  Some days will be harder than others…I still have a lot of healing to do because I’ve been incredibly cruel to myself for too long, but I have to win this fight because the alternative is death.  There’s so many of you reading this that I want to meet and spend time with and I can’t do that if I’m not around so I am going to fix what is holding me back.  I’ve even started to get that urge to challenge myself again.  While it’s still early there’s something inside of me that keeps thinking about my unfinished business with Ironman.  I need to lose a lot of weight to hope to be able to do that but I’m already down 20 lbs and it’s not out of the realm of possibility and also gives me a long term goal to focus on as well.

Closing thoughts for now…

This isn’t a cry for help nor am I asking for sympathy.  The blame for being in this position lies solely with me and I bear the responsibility to get myself out of this position.  What I will ask for is patience and support.  Your love and care means the world to me even if I’m not always so good at showing it. I also write this because there might be someone out there who feels trapped and is just counting down the time like I was and I want you to know you’re not alone.  Start moving…every step taken is a step towards a happier life.  Just one foot in front of the other. #walkwithme

                                  -Jared “JT” England