Ran again, and did the faster pace with the longer stride. It works! I mean, I'm not any faster than Monday, but I was able to keep the same pace all the way through - longer strides and I was definitely going at a faster pace than runs previous to Monday. Jason and I have been running our same distances lately, and we basically run half our distance, then turn around and come back the same way. When he was coming back and I passed him much farther along than I normally do, he gave me a big thumbs up, and I just felt like a million bucks. Go, me!
I've been thinking a lot lately about the whole VA Tech mess - it's hard not to with it all over the news. My heart really goes out to Seung-Hui Cho's family - his parents, his sister - whose names are not at the top of people's "please pray for..." lists. I'm guessing that while they are not only mourning the loss of their son/brother, but feeling a great deal of shame, embarrassment, and hurt, too. Cho was a sick, sick guy, and I don't think there was much else that his family could have done. It's a sad reflection on the state of mental illness programs in the US nowadays: insurance companies really don't fund inpatient mental illness stays very well, and are especially stingy when it comes to patients with diagnoses like "antisocial (aka sociopath)" or those who generally act out. If Cho had been schizophrenic, it might be a different story - acting out is seen as just "being bad". Plus, the lack of MH resources meant that Cho's parents were likely ill-equipped to deal with their son's difficulties, were afraid or ashamed to seek help for it, or else just got shuffled around. It's a soapbox I could climb on and stay on all day, but I won't for now. Right now, it's too late, and there are a lot of grieving, hurting people out there, including the Cho family. It makes me feel both grateful and a little ashamed myself that the biggest problem in my life is a reflection of my blessings: the dimpling of my ass, the grades that hover just below A's in the nursing program I am able to attend, the dilemma over which direction to take with my new nursing career that is such a dream come true in itself.
I hope that we can come out of this tragedy with a sense of how much we need to care for our nation's mentally ill and provide more avenues for treatment so that events like Monday's can possibly be prevented. And I hope that our hearts are not hardened to families like Cho's who feel very alone right now, very scared, very ashamed, and still have to grieve the loss of their son/brother.
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