On the road again
On running
As a kid, I wasn’t an athlete. Though I had a stint with competitive diving, by high school, I left that practice behind to sing and dance in a show choir, like the kind on Glee. I was eventually kicked out of that choir. The directors thought I was a stoner. They were not wrong. I remember them telling me while I sat on a chair in a dark and empty auditorium. The stage was one place where I could move and leave everything else behind, and they were taking it away from me. At home, my life was falling apart; my mother. I was just a kid, but already I felt these adults were telling me I had to grow up.
When I did, I started running, a new way to move my body. In college, I used to run hungover to expel “toxins” or just get rid of the headache, the nausea. I used to run to lose weight. I used to pair all movement with diets, or just not eating. The running was secondary.
When I started running races in graduate school, there was less of that. It was more a way to counter the sedentary nature of an intellectual, creative life. All the back-breaking, butt-caving sitting I did while reading, writing, thinking. It still happens, though less often now: I get so immersed in a project that when I finally stand up, my ass hurts, I’ve been on it so long. It’s monstrous.
When I became a mother, running was something else entirely. A way to get away. To be outside. To get some sun. To think. And to move, flying through the air in a sort of dance, dumb music pepping me up, to the beat. Sometimes, yes, it was still about loss—about making my body smaller. But over time, I’ve let that go. I run to be alone, to be anywhere but inside, to feel strong, to see what my body can still do, to meditate, and to be less sad about the world and about being human.
Over the past few months, after the book release, and while working intensely on new projects, my ankles and hips have started to get tight. My feet feel weak. The remnants of pregnancy, the hormone relaxin and what it’s done to my pelvis, the skeletal changes of carrying babies, are there. I haven’t been running. I needed a break from pushing, from trying, from rushing. I allowed myself the depressive posture, physically and emotionally.
When I got sober a few years ago, running once again became something else for me— an addiction, maybe, but also an altered state that takes me deeper into myself, instead of away from myself. Actually, that’s not always true— this is what I love about running. How it takes us out of the head, even the body, but also puts us deeper into them both.
In any case, I’ve been back on the road this week, running. I’m not ready to say out loud the very long distance I’m training for, but I’ll take all the advice and encouragement you might have. I’m looking forward to reminding myself why I do this.
I hope you’ll join us next week, Sunday May 5, for our monthly seminar, this one on writing against (or just reinventing) the hero’s journey. You can register here. The discount code for all paid subscribers is ($25 off!):