The Corners of My Mind

LOOK AT THIS FRONT-FACING CAMERA!

Never again will I struggle with attempting to take a selfie through the iPhone’s regular camera because the front-facing camera sucks.

I got my first new phone in almost four years this past weekend – my previous, the iPhone 5S, was purchased in January of 2014. Do you realize how long ago January 2014 was? Let me put it this way.

• NJ Governor Chris Christie was proven to be involved in the bridge scandal
• President Obama announced NSA reforms
• We had a President Obama
• Obama was president
• The president’s last name was “Obama”
• Donald Trump tweeted “I consider myself too perfect and have no faults” and it only got 1533 likes

It was a long time ago.

I got the iPhone 7 because I truly do not need the latest and greatest of anything. I just need a phone that doesn’t drain its battery in 20 minutes and has a GOOD FRONT-FACING CAMERA. So I’m happy.

I read something recently that said you shouldn’t run for a like a week following a 5K race. Although maybe in some cases this is good advice, to me, to be honest, it feels INSANE. Not run for a week? No.

So even though I ran two races in the past five days, I decided to run this morning. I already did an upper body workout yesterday, so what was I going to do this morning? Not run?

So I ran. But I found myself going on the slower side – not a crawl, just not pushing it whatsoever. I’d only had 4:40 of sleep (back to my old routine, I guess) and I hadn’t eaten beforehand like I normally do, so I might have been a little low energy to begin with.

I just did my usual 4.3-mile route, a good combination of flat, slight uphills, and slight downhills – nothing super intense until the very last hill, which is steep but short. It’s the route I did all the time when I first moved back to Northport before realizing I had to mix it up in order to keep my sanity.

It’s also the route I ran the morning my mother died, and I’ve realized that now I will always make that association. But for some reason, it makes me want to run it more. Like I want to face it. Last June, I got into a car accident (I’m fine) on a particular stretch of road that I have tried my hardest to avoid ever since. I think I’ve wanted to avoid it because the accident was my fault. So I have a really negative association with that area – not because of the accident, but because of the guilt I felt and still feel.

But I have no feelings of guilt about the last year with my mother. Not too many, anyway. Occasionally I wish I had been more affectionate or spent more time talking to her, even when it didn’t seem like she was aware of my presence. I could have stroked her hands more. Why didn’t I stroke her hands more? I should have. But I try not to wallow in those feelings for too long. It’s pointless. I can only take from those experiences and learn from them.

I’ll still run the routes that I associate with her. I’d rather be reminded of her than not.

And anyway, I’m okay running in places that remind me of painful things, because I’m bound to be reminded of them anyway – I might as well be exercising while it happens.