Day Three: Life Equations

Truth is my running days were over before the marathon told
me so. I’d heard all about it over the last couple years, what with my left hip
and left knee barking at me every time I ran more than a couple miles, but I
didn’t pay attention to what they were saying.

Why the stubbornness? Well … because I am. I want stuff to
work when I want it to work, and when it doesn’t I sometimes pretend it still
does while hoping it will. It’s my imagination, sideways.

But why hold on so tightly to this one aerobic exercise so
easily swapped with another? Rewind 10 years, and I’m the girl who never ran
and never wanted to. And then one day, a day in a time when I really wanted to
run away, I found I could at least run. Just a little, but that’s a how it goes
at first. It’s more walking than running. Keep at it and 1 + 1 = 2 takes over,
that basic equation of getting into shape.

But to me it was 1 + 1 = 3. It was a classic story that
opened with a girl like you, like me, chasing down something she couldn’t catch.
What made this day different from all the days before was she was awake to the fact
that she couldn’t and she knew why. What she’d been chasing was never hers to
have. So she stopped. She asked, “What now?” The answer didn’t come for awhile
(a slow part – every story has one), but when it did, it required a turn to a
new way. There’s a lot of doubt in the new. Those first steps were hard, but
she took them, and she found some things to help her keep going. Running was
one of them.

Running was good for me for a long time. It was hard to see
it’d gone bad. Even when I was sidelined on the marathon, I plotted how I’d be back.

But it was time to let the running go. Letting it go left a hole, and it felt like one, too. I wondered what would fill it because it couldn’t stay like that. It was a hole.

Feeling like you just busted into the middle of a conversation? Maybe you did. Let me take you to Day One of this series so you can begin at the beginning.