The Voice

Do you hear “that voice?”  Not the usual somewhat negative voice that mildly questions just about everything you do.  That one is annoying and can wear you down.  It’s the one that suggests that “Sure, it’s fine if you stick around for one more episode of Duck Dynasty, you can run tomorrow.”  Or “Well, you’re already having a burger and fries, why not have the milkshake too.”  It is the voice of the grasshopper that wants to enjoy the sun while the ant stores up food for winter.  It is self-involved Goofus to the always perfect Gallant.  Let’s call this the Goofus voice.

(Every freaking month when Highlights arrived in the mail I’d hope for Goofus that he had learned his lesson from the previous month.  It was like my own third grade soap opera.  HE NEVER LEARNED!  I did read somewhere that today Goofus would be considered as having “an alternative learning style.”  I love that!)

But I’m not talking about that voice, I’m talking about the voice that goes for the jugular, the one that says “You’re a complete and total failure, why even bother exercising at all?”  Or “Your crappy body deserves crappy food.”  The destructive voice that you don’t hear often, but when you do nothing good comes of it.  I’m not sure where this voice comes from, but one person I know truly believes that this is the voice of a demon that should be called out in the name of Jesus.  I don’t fully agree with this view, but I do appreciate the seriousness with which this person takes that voice.  (And I do like looking at the voice as something apart from me.  It isn’t my voice, it isn’t me.)

I heard that voice last week.  My friend Kelly called to give me a pep talk about running.  She’d read in the blog about my disappointment with how little time I was dropping on my mile pace and wanted to let me know that she ran a slower pace in the summer than she did when the temperature was cooler and with lower humidity.  This call was like a life ring, or a water station in a race.  (Look at me embracing running imagery!)  Kelly has run several half marathons and obviously knows what she’s talking about, and it made perfect sense to me once she said it. 

But no sooner had I grabbed on to that life ring that the voice started up.  “Why on Earth would Kelly call you about running?  Why would she waste what she knows on you?  It isn’t heat or humidity, it’s YOU!  You’re SLOW because you’re FAT!”   That voice also rears its ugly head when people have said such nice things about my writing and this half marathon goal.  “They can’t possibly mean it,” it snarls, “they have to say SOMETHING because what you’re doing is so ridiculous.”  This voice sounds a lot like Nellie Oleson at her worst, so we’re going to call this the Nellie voice.

Here’s the interesting thing though.  This Nellie voice makes no sense.  Kelly has just moved to a new town and is pretty busy establishing a new life for her family.  It would be so much easier for her not to make that call than to make it.  And the people who have said positive things are actually very nice people who are not known for saying things they don’t mean.  When I push that voice out in the open, it is exposed for the sad, angry thing that it is.

When I go for a run I hear from Goofus first. “ It would be so much easier to stay in the air conditioning, chafing is becoming a problem in the heat and humidity, my thigh is a little achy.”  After a couple of minutes Nellie takes over and starts her tirade of “This is a waste of time, are you sure this thigh thing isn’t actually hip dysplasia?”  Interestingly though, about ten minutes in I start to hear from another voice.  It is quiet but very confident.  It is reassuring  and tells me that I’ve got this.  This voice is all me.