My Battle Within

By Paul Hassett

Paul Hassett loves running. Running, as in running up a mountain and back down. Running, as in running 100 miles in a single day. Running is Paul's way of coping with depression, and the way that he has found to really let go of the past. Many times in his life, he has pulled the pain of the events in his life inside of him and held tight. But he finally found something that helped him release it all. Running long distances has helped Paul heal, forgive, and grow.
Beginning with a 5K race, and ultimately arriving at a 100-mile race, Paul's progression through the distances follows a direct line along his journey of learning to positively deal with his depression. Running has saved Paul's life.
Join Paul in his cathartic journey through the pain, the healing, and his first year of ultrarunning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Hassett
• Release date: Nov 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311431387

Book preview

FOREWORD

Every once in a while you meet someone new and feel like you've known that person all your life. Paul is one of those people.

Genuine and magnetic, a personality like Paul's is hard to describe. In person, Paul is larger-than-life, engaging, and commands the attention of his audience. At the same time, he is deeply humble and trusting of others.

I first heard about Paul through my friend Christine, who paced him on the birthday run that he describes in this book. Judging by the way she spoke about him, I was certain they were long-time friends. I found out later that they had only just met.

I had seen Paul without knowing who he was at several of the races he writes about here. I remember seeing him at Los Pinos 50K, looking pretty terrible at the finish line. His face was white, drained from the exertion of the trail, and his eyes looked terrified that they might still send him out for another loop.

I thought, This is the face of man who gave it all he had, and the more I learned about Paul, the more I understood that this is the way he approaches both life and running—at full force, always pushing forward, and never quitting. Paul earned his medal that day, as he would on many other days to follow.

In this book Paul describes the struggles that have plagued his life, but his words also reveal his limitless positivity and passion for life. This is a book about Paul, but it also more than that. It is a book about battling depression through long distance running.

In my own writings, I have often tried to describe running's remarkable ability to heal our emotional, spiritual, and psychological wounds. Paul has taken that concept to a deeper level by describing his battle with depression, and how running brought him relief.

According to the CDC, it is estimated that 1 in 9 American adults struggle with depression. Imagine if thousands could find in trail running what Paul has: a joy that is simple and free of charge.

This is also a book about family. Paul has found in his wife Rachel unconditional love and never-ending support. His passion and dedication to his children are also reflected in these pages. In a sport where relationships can fall apart due to the strenuous toll that running brings to our lives, the Hassetts are living proof that it can work.

As he wrote this book, Paul was battling with injuries that kept him off the trail. His body has taken him on a ride that would leave any dedicated trail runner feeling depressed. Instead of sinking into that dark hole, Paul used his recovery time to write this story and plan for his next running challenge.

The best stories are the ones about ordinary people living extraordinary experiences, and Paul's life has been both eventful and inspiring. I am lucky to know Paul. His positivity never ceases to move me, and I am certain you will feel the same way.

-Vanessa Runs

vanessaruns.com

INTRODUCTION

This is my story. It is the life I have witnessed and lived through. This is how I see my life through my eyes. I can’t even guess how others see my life or witness it. I won’t go into how I think others envisioned my life. Because this is the story of how I overcame the hardships in my life and how I am maintaining sanity in this world -- through running.

Running has saved me from myself and the depression that took over my life.

I hope that I might help someone that has been through some of the same experiences. Maybe my words will help with a way out or some inspiration. I also hope to meet others that may be having the same struggles.

I grew up in the same household or neighborhoods as others I know, and I turned out different than they have. So I will not speculate on what they were thinking or feeling when we were growing up together. I know I take things a bit hard in certain situations and I am mentally built different than those I grew up around. When I describe things during my life in these pages, it will be through my eyes and how life impacted me.

It wasn’t easy for me to write all of this down because it shows a lot of personal pain and hardships inside my mind. I am putting myself out there so that I may grow as a human being, and in hopes that I might help another person. It is not always easy for us humans to talk about what is going on internally because it makes us vulnerable. But I, for one, no longer care about hiding it all inside. Getting it all out of me and onto paper has been good therapy. This story is what I went through in the real world and how my mind perceived it. I’m not going to be ripping into people that hurt me because I’ve moved on and forgiven them. The words in these pages are a form of therapy for me, not to blame others. For years all I did was blame and hate others, so that it consumed me and eventually I lost who I was. That destroyed me psychologically for a long period in my life. Holding onto that hate disconnected me from all the love I could have been giving or receiving. I truly did not know how to love someone with so much hate and fear in my heart. I let it drive me after my mother died. The hate took over and blocked the good things in my life.

Opening up about what is going on internally is both difficult and revealing. I do hope with opening up about my depression and other issues that I might just help even just that one person who needs it.

THE DESCENT INTO DARKNESS

No one else is going to fix you so you might as well start fixing yourself today.

AT ODDS WITH MYSELF

I’m staring up at the colorful red walls of the Grand Canyon near the Colorado River not believing I’m actually here. It seemed like I would never experience the grandeur of this awesome canyon. My mother and I had a coin jar that we would throw coins in whenever we could - for a trip to the Grand Canyon. But that coin jar never filled up enough for that journey South.

This trip would have been the trip my mother and I tried to save up for for many years. She got sicker as the years passed by - spending more time in the hospital than out of it, at times. If she wasn't in kidney dialysis, it was to get her blood pressure down to a respectable level. Eventually the coins stopped dropping into the coin jars and we started to live day to day, surviving. Dreams fade when you don't have the strength to look that far ahead anymore... when you're doing everything in your power just to keep living. She was strong-willed, and survived a long time after her body gave up. I believe she fought on to make sure her kids were in a good place before she could rest. She fought to live her life the best she could and to give her children everything she could, especially her love.

I have her will now. I had lost it for so many years. I lost it living in the past and holding onto hate of so many things. I forgot the lessons of my mother, the one person I should be living to make proud. I hid for so many years from the true person I could be, and fell deeper into that dark place we go when we no longer want to live. The past year of ultrarunning had helped me learn more about myself than the previous three years running on the road. There is something to this ultrarunning - pushing beyond your physical and laying bare your heart and mind. Pushing beyond what you thought possible, surviving beyond the point of disaster. My mother did that for years with her sickness and now I want to live for her - to do the things we set out to do and never could.

This trip was that defining moment where I could look at myself and see my mother. I can feel again that love she had for me, and that strength she had to hold on for so long. I don't know if there is an afterlife or not, but I could feel her strong spirit with me that whole trip.

I remember being that kid laying in the grass, staring up into the sky, watching the clouds go by, dreaming of the person I would be when I became an adult. That kid dreamed big and had no limit on how far he could go. I was a dreamer - wanting to be Carl Lewis or Tony Dorsett when I grew up. Watching those men influenced me when I was much younger. Before all the hard stuff in life hit me, I dreamed about being so many things... an actor, singer, track star, football player.

Somewhere in my life it all fell apart and I don't know exactly when it did. I have a feeling it started around the time my father walked out on my mother, brother and me; and took my two younger brothers with him. The divorce hit me hard; as a kid you have no idea what is going on. You hear your parents fighting about everything under the roof. My father would leave at times and it was a very confusing time for me. I remember crying a lot and feeling like I had done something wrong. I blamed myself for it and I took it to heart.

After he left it created a rift inside me - part of me wanted to be with him and part of me wanted to hate his guts. It seemed like I never saw him or my younger brothers all that much after he left. He moved in with another woman who eventually became my stepmother. I can't speculate on what happened to my parents’ love or their lives, I can only explain what that divorce did to me. The divorce caused tremendous pain inside my mind; I did not know why or what happened. Being nine years old, I had no understanding of relationships between men and women, but I knew what I felt after they fell apart from one another.

Being distant from my father for so long and never seeing him or my brothers caused a lifelong rift with those brothers. Thinking back, I could never get close to anyone after the divorce except for my mother. I believe the divorce gave me abandonment issues and they started festering inside my mind with every relationship I had after the divorce. Panic would set in after a while in relationships, and I would try to sabotage the relationship and get out of it before they could hurt me. I started a repeating process inside myself - every time anything good came into my life, I would sabotage it and cause an issue.

This is something I didn't want to do consciously, but it was a mechanism to keep me safe - like building walls around my heart to keep people from hurting me. I built walls as thick as the Great Wall of China around my heart for a long time after my father left. I started to build hate in my heart which in turn let fear seep into my mind during the next few years. Once you let hate and fear into your life it becomes very dark and lonely. I let the darkness or depression consume me.

I fell deeper into depression as the years passed. My mother started getting sick - she would disappear for days or weeks with me not knowing exactly what was going on. Before she got sick with high blood pressure she was a Certified Nurses Aid studying to be a Registered Nurse. She never finished her studies to become an RN because of her sickness. She couldn't work anymore because she would be too sick to stand for very long.

So with that we started living on welfare and social security and our budget disappeared. We lived in an old single wide trailer, an old hotel turned into apartments, and even a literal shack for a while. With her illness she was home a lot less, getting her blood pressure to a respectable level in the hospital. She would just be gone and I was left with my older brother, who was two years older than I was. At that time in his life, he was not the greatest person to be around either. He was going through the same thing as I was, and he was dealing with it in his own way. Now his way would clash with mine and it was not pretty. He had a temper and was very threatening to me during those childhood years, to the point where I was really scared to be around him. We would clash a lot, especially during the first years after Dad took off and Mom started visiting the hospital frequently.

My brother and I weren't always at odds. We had our moments of clarity and realized we were brothers going through the same situation. We would cook all kinds of concoctions in the oven with the stuff we got from the food bank. But those happy moments would end and we would be at odds again.

It became increasingly hard to be around my classmates. I tried to hide the fact that I was poor and unhappy from everyone. That’s a hard thing to do when your sports bus drives by your shack and your teammates or classmates make fun of you. That starts eating at you, and just reminds you that you have no control over how poor you are.

When everything starts piling on top of you as a child, you have no idea how to deal with all of it. You act out or retreat inside yourself. When my mother was around, she and I got along really well. We did everything together when we could. In the years right after my dad left, she did find a boyfriend (someone she had worked with) and he lived with us during some of my early years. When he was around we lived better; there was more money and more love in the house with him and his daughter. I appreciated these times when he was in my mother’s life; I believe it made her life better. I don't think she ever fell out of love with my dad but I believe her boyfriend Bob provided some love and caring in her life when she needed it. My mother loved and adored his daughter Traci. She was everything my mother always wanted: a red-headed daughter. My mother had given birth to five boys and had always wanted a daughter. Life with Bob in our lives was better.

But my mother was getting sicker with each passing year. Eventually her kidneys failed and she had to start going to kidney dialysis every other day. She also started to have heart attacks. I remember one year she was gone all summer having a triple bypass done. By that time I was a teenager, and I started working so I could afford clothing for school and food. I started working young, doing odd jobs at first: bucking hay, picking strawberries, washing dishes at a local restaurant. Eventually, I started lying about my age and got a job working at a fish company. I gutted fish, cleaned the tanks out, glazed fish and drove forklift. That job paid a 14 year old very well, and it afforded me nicer clothes and shoes. I remember buying my mother a microwave from the local hardware store. At this time I remember falling deeper into a depression, and would fall apart if I was alone. I would cry or think about why I was even in this world. I would let all the bad things pile up and think about them too much. Lashing out angrily at anyone close to me was another way for me to release the tension inside my head.

I tried to play sports and found some relief in it. I played my heart out, and got out some aggression and pain while playing. Football was my favorite because I could hurt people and be hurt. I enjoyed hitting people to release the pain inside me. I would much rather feel physical pain than be alone with my thoughts. Playing sports helped me get out of my head and into a physical place where I could just play. Sports is just kids playing. Being a kid was not something that came easy to me because I had a lot of responsibility.

Don't get me wrong - I could clown around like the best of them. Heck, entertaining people became my favorite pastime. It became another avenue for a mental release. I would clown around and make others laugh, so that I would not feel the pain inside. Making others laugh made me smile and forget for a second that my life sucked. My life didn't really suck, it wasn’t the worst life in the world, but as a kid I believed it was. I knew kids were dying or starving all over the world but for me, inside my head I was suffering.

I didn't know how to get along with people all that much, without being funny or taking their heads off in some sport. I tried to fit in with most people, but it was tough to open up. I had one friend that was pretty close and we stayed close for most of elementary, middle and some high school. We both came from broken homes without a lot of money. We were both named Paul also so we kind of fit together during that time.

Don't get me wrong - I had friends, or people I thought I could be friends with - but I had a dark secret. I did not like who I was and I wanted out of my head. I didn't like where I came from and I had a lot of hate brewing inside me. Hate for everything that made me happy and hate for my dad and brother. I held onto that hate for many years and it grew to the point where I could not stand it.

There was nothing I could do when I fell apart inside, I would just find some place to hide and cry it out. Especially when my mother was getting sicker, being scared became an everyday thing. Being scared of losing my mother and being scared of everything around me. To tell you the truth I was scared of the dark, heights, people at times and especially my brother and his antics. Eventually my mother kicked my older brother out for lying to her and stealing from her. I think all of us brothers found some kind of way to rebel against what had transpired with our parents. Each one of us had issues during our childhood with getting into trouble one way or another. Maybe we were fighting for attention or were just plain dumb.

For me I just wanted to be outside of myself during those times. I would cry more and more when I was alone thinking about it all. I dwelled on everything bad that happened to me and let it all grow inside of me. I let that hate and fear grow until it took over and I could not pull myself out of it.

I started driving when I was only 12 years old. I spent a lot of time driving my mother around the area and state, when she was doing different things to keep busy or healthy. There would be times I would have to stop the car and pull over so my mom could puke.

It also seemed like every night my mother would be in the bathroom puking and not able to keep anything down. She went from being a lively woman with gleaming light blue-colored eyes that could melt your heart every time she looked at you, to a very sick woman. This made me hate my father even more for leaving her to die. Everything compounded inside my head. I was losing confidence in myself and losing a bit of myself every day as I watched my mother get sicker. It is the toughest thing to listen to your mom inside the bathroom, puking up her food and eventually just dry heaving. I don't know if it was the medicine she was taking or the disease taking over but she was in the bathroom a lot puking when I was in high school.

My mother was the only one I could truly talk to about my issues. The schools tried to have me talk to counselors. But they just pissed me off, giving me stupid advice. At least, that was what I thought as a teenager. I probably would welcome it now since I've grown, but back then? No way - I wanted them to stay out of my business.

My mother and I were very close. For many reasons I believed she was the only one I had in the world. It was tough to see her in bad shape. With each year that passed, her body changed; she was losing weight and her skin was turning a bit yellow. Her insides were being destroyed from her own blood. She would walk out of hospitals with blood pressure that would knock a horse over. She was one tough cookie. When she was feeling good, she rode horses in a drill team, did barrel racing, and any of the other things cowgirls do on horses. But she would pay for it the next couple of weeks. She would always get sicker after each outing with the drill team or time out on her horse. But she didn't want to let her sickness take away her livelihood. Doctors wanted her to stop, but that would have killed her sooner. She was happiest riding or working with horses, or seeing her boys and trying to spoil us in any way she could. She didn't have a lot of money but what she lacked in money she made up for in an abundance of love.

Before her sickness we would take trips together across the state to visit different people. We would camp out at the Silver Lake Horse Camp near Mt. Baker. We would go riding with her horse riding friends. I remember every night around the campfire we would sit around and play a card game named Kings. The first horse she bought me was a little Shetland pony. That Shetland pony was a big pain in the rear. He would always run away and I would have to go find him. She then moved me up to a Welsh Pony and eventually she bought a Paint Quarter Horse for me named Rowdy. I loved the adventures my mom and I took with her horse friends in the mountains, on horseback through the Cascades.

My favorite times with my mother had to do with horseback riding. She was always the happiest on top of a Dappled Grey or a Buckskin horse. My mother’s personality was like that of a wild horse, free on some prairie somewhere. She was nice as long as you were, but if you treated her wrong, she would buck you off hard. She always took me to the Whatcom County Fair in Lynden. I would find a job for the week while she rode her horses on the drill team. Those fairground days were always filled with so much fun and memories of camping out with my mother and her friends.

She always helped me with my homework if I needed it. Her round Irish face would be smiling when I brought good grades home or upset when I didn’t. She wanted more than anything for me to graduate from high school. My mother had a temper and it showed if I didn’t do something right or if I did something stupid. But she was always quick to apologize if she flew off the handle and grounded me for years. She would come into my room after an hour and sit and talk with me about