It’s natural that as one year ends and a new one begins that we look both backwards and forwards.
The pain and loss we’ve experienced as well as the successes and high points of the previous year and we look ahead to the coming year with excitement about our goals and dreams.
2015 saw massive, earth shattering upheaval for me.
I came to the realisation that I had to deal with my gender dysphoria after fighting my whole life, I came out in my professional and personal life, I went through the amicable break up of my 20 year relationship with a partner that I love dearly, I moved town and began a new career, as Sophie.
Physically, as well as changing gender, I went from 23 stone and unable to walk properly to running half marathons.
New Year’s Eve is an emotional time, both positive and negative and so I awoke today a little down.
Feeling fat and bloated after the festive season I knew that exercise would shake me up, make me fell better about myself and make a big difference to my mental outlook.
As I set off along Brighton seafront it was one of those beautiful, sunny winter’s days, windy but nice.
The running was easy, sometimes you just get into the flow of it, and around the 3 mile mark I decided to go for the half marathon, 13.1 miles.
At 5 miles I passed Brighton Marina and began the climb up the cliff top towards Rottingdean which would be my 6.6 mile turning point.
Everything went well until the start of the return leg when a sudden storm descended upon me.
Running into horizontal driving sleet I quickly became drenched whilst barely moving due to the headwind. The sleet was coming down so hard that the only way I could keep going was by pulling my woolly cap down to my chin and looking through the loose knit material.
I took shelter in a bus stop for a minute or two, speaking to an elderly man waiting for his bus.
“You look too sensible to be running half marathons,” he observed after we’d made the obligatory small talk about the foul weather.
I was wet, cold, by this point tired and starting to feel the pain in my knee and the weather appeared to be getting worse by the minute.
As a homeward bound bus approached I quickly said my goodbyes, explaining that if I was in the bus stop when the bus arrived that it would be too tempting to give up.
Running off into the storm I couldn’t help but think that maybe I was dafter than he obviously thought I looked.
Sure enough, as it does, the weather began to improve and by the time I was back on the sea front the storm had passed.
I completed my 13.1 miles but it left me with a couple of things to think about.
If I’d given up when the going was worst then I wouldn’t have succeeded, by sticking it out and pushing through the difficulty the conditions began to ease and things got better.
It was also Sod’s Law that the storm hit just as I was running along the cliff top with no possibility of shelter.
At the point when I was most exposed and most vulnerable I was hit by my biggest challenge and isn’t that often the case.
So as we head into 2016 just remember that if you can stick it out through the tough times, especially the ones that hit when you’re vulnerable, then things will get better, you just need the strength of will to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Happy new year and here’s to great things for all of us in 2016.
Tickets on sale now for my show, ‘Grab Life by the Balls’ in these towns in 2016.