The Dragon Within.

I had an epiphany in self realization tonight, and it happened on the treadmill.

It had been a pretty good day, in all. I had the day off with my wife and my girls,  but in my mind there was a strange dark cloud.

This dark cloud is not unfamiliar to me.  

I've called it by many names over the years: Anger, Frustration, and even Defeat.

A co-worker and I used to call it The Dragon Within.

In high school, a doctor called it Attention Deficit Disorder.

And just a few years ago, a psychologist called it Depression.

But none of those names really seemed to fit it. It was more than that.

My father had it, and by the harrowing stories he's told me, his father had it too.

I've always just pushed it back down, suppressing it until I felt it subside. If I ignored it, it didn't exist.

Right?

Let's go back to the beginning.

Ever since elementary school, I remember always getting into trouble. Always acting out. In junior high it continued, and in high school it led to a doctor diagnosing me with ADD and putting me on a narcotic called Ritalin.

The Ritalin made me feel like there was a ball of tension in my chest and it came out expressed as anger. I hated it. I always felt as though the doctor who diagnosed me didn't even try to find out why I was acting the way I was.

This was at a time when kids all over the U.S. were being slapped with the same blanket diagnosis. ADD or ADHD seemed to be the easy way to tell parents that their kids needed expensive pharmaceuticals and nothing else would help.

Now, I'm not saying ADD and ADHD aren't real. I don't have the experience or knowledge to make that claim. What I do know, is that myself and countless other kids were being pumped full of amphetamines. And we hated it.

In high school I found something that changed my life. The skatepark.

I felt something when I went to the skatepark, and it was absolutely liberating. Here was a place I could go and exert as much energy as I had to exert. It was a place I could go when I was feeling the cloud build up inside. I spent every waking moment that I wasn't in school skating.  It was such an outlet for me that I kept it up ever since.

Later, in my twenties, I found cycling. First it was fixed gear road bikes for several years, which evolved into mountain biking. As long as I was on the bike I was happy. Hustling as fast and as far as my legs would take me, I was free. The dragon never reared it's ugly head.

Then, just after I turned 30, we had our twin girls, Parker and Zoe. The free time all but disappeared, and I would go months without riding, skating, or running.

Having kids is hard. Having TWO AT ONCE was insane. The amount of joy and beauty was matched only by the stress and exhaustion. Stress from lack of sleep. Exhaustion from working 2-3 jobs at once, then coming home to a brand new challenge. Being a new parent felt at times overwhelming.

 The clouds began to gather.

I want to make one thing abundantly clear here: My wife and daughters are the BEST things that have ever happened to me. My heart is filled with so much love and joy having them in my life. Every new day I am awed by how much my daughters are growing and learning, and my wife amazes me with her seemingly unending patience, love and support.

So why do I feel angry? Why do I feel like the weight of the world is grinding me into an emotional mess? My life is filled with so much love and no shortage of support. For the last few years it has baffled me that I can have so much but feel so down all the time.

Last night I realized why.

I got on the treadmill after more than a year off of running, and I couldn't stop. I ran for an hour straight, all out. It was like a release valve had just opened up and all of the tension was able to escape. It was a feeling I don't get very often these days, so I almost forgot how cathartic it was. As I was running, I came to the realization that all of my acting out as a child, all of my grumpiness and my "Attention Deficit" was all stemmed from an accumulation of energy to the boiling point.  It became clear to me why I loved skating so much when I was younger, and why I loved physical exertion in general. It was a pressure release that saved me from exploding.  I may never have put the pieces together before, but I realized last night just how necessary that was for me.

Physical exertion is a necessity, not just for me, but for a lot of people. Countless articles will tell you how exercise helps release endorphins and dopamine, causing a reduction in stress, anxiety and depression.  Too many people (including myself at times) turn to alcohol or drugs try and quell the stresses of life, only to find the hole still there. From now on, the only drugs I need can be found within my own brain. And now I know how to unlock them.

I can't help but feeling that all my younger self needed was an outlet. I didn't need drugs or booze. I found them, and they led me to darker places. I didn't need counselors or even a shrink later on. What I needed was that pressure release.

I've always known, somehow, that there was a simple solution. but I could never quite put my finger on it. I never realized just how important that outlet was.

Now, whenever I feel that pressure beginning to build and the clouds start to gather, I know how to clear the skies.