Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

by Alexi Pappas

proceeded to do a goofy voice and threw in a pratfall for good measure—and lo and behold, it worked. She forgot her pain, and I didn’t have to deal with what pain feels like. Avoiding feelings like pain and sadness came naturally to me.

You know that old chestnut about how comedians all have the same black hole in their hearts due to sadness? It’s probably true.

Comedy is a wonderful avoidance tool that I would highly recommend if you’re not up for feeling your feelings. It’s a mask you can wear, a suit of armor you can don to protect the very mushy parts of your insides too fragile to embrace.

when I had to make a tough decision, a good friend asked me, “You know the definition of brave, right?” And she went on to say, “It’s facing your fears,” or maybe she said, “Being strong even though you’re scared,” or…wait a minute, I think I wrote down what she said so that I wouldn’t forget it…aaaand I can’t find it.

I looked up the definition of brave in the dictionary and it reads as follows: Brave—ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage.

Courage—the ability to do something that frightens one; strength in the face of pain or grief.

Over the years working at Saturday Night Live, people often asked me who my favorite hosts were and without hesitation I’ve always said the professional athletes. (Derek Jeter to name one.) And I think it is because of the incredibly calm, almost blissfully sedated ease that they carry themselves with. It’s a sort of “I can do anything” demeanor. Hosting a live television show isn’t scary to Derek Jeter because hitting a home run to left field in front of a crowd of 50,000 people is just a day at work for him.

the pedestal that I created for her is really just a smokescreen for the truth: That underneath it all, all human beings are vulnerable at our core.

it is in the power of the individual to create one’s own destiny.

Children of trauma know this all too well. We go through life thinking everyone else has it better than us until we grow up and realize we’re all in our own tiny boats of self-doubt and second-guessing. (This is probably why puberty was inve...

as we grow up something interesting happens. Somehow we manage to find each other. To connect and actually become the new normal: broken but not defeated, and glued back together again and again and again. I think this is such a clear testament to the human spirit.

I liked the feeling of winning. It made me feel like I mattered. All I’ve ever wanted in my life is to matter.

What I now understand is that a successful person can be successful in anything, the good and the bad. This is both empowering and heartbreaking.

All of my early memories, even the happy ones, are tinted with this feeling that I’m the least interesting thing in the room.

Mattering taunted me because it felt like it was not for me. I remember feeling desperate to do whatever it took to get the attention I craved.

so I decided that I would need to become the most interesting...

I decided that even though I didn’t matter enough for my mom to choose to stay with me, I would matter to ever...

translated my internal desires into external effort. I would learn, in time, how painful and unsustainable it is to be fueled by trauma like ...

In those early middle school years, whether I won a race or not was purely a question of how hard I could push myself.

It was a contest of me versus my own pain tolerance.

This is why I love to run. Because it is a way for me to push on and explore the outermost limits of myself, mentally and physically,...

The same dynamic applies to my creative pursuits: How much pain, how much uncertainty, how much discomfort am I brave enough to endure before I give up?

However small my audience was at first, I was keenly aware that being a role model is a privilege and a responsibility.

I didn’t want them trying to replicate my hundred-plus-miles-a-week training regimen; I wanted to give them something they could healthily adopt as their own. So instead of posting workout splits, I posted poems.

One night, before a particularly daunting workout, I typed out this poem: run like a bravey sleep like a baby dream like a crazy replace can’t with maybe

word bravey, and it stuck. It became the label for a mini-movement, a self-identifier for those who are willing to chase their dreams even though it can be intimidating and scary.

Growing up, I chased specific labels: strong, fierce, fast, funny, pretty. But all of those labels were outward facing—they described an energy you project into the world.

Being a Bravey is different. It’s inward facing, a choice you make about your relationship with yourself. We all have dreams that we’re chasing, however big or small, and we can all decide to be brave enough to give ourselves a chance.

Chasing a dream is a never-ending negotiation, as in, you have to keep navigating, pivoting, adapting, and persisting.

good thing i didn’t accomplish all my goals yet because then what would i do tomorrow?

so badly wanted to experience that feeling of having my hand held by a woman who was walking half a step ahead of me.

I felt resentful but still curious, unable to look away,

Every little girl watches and looks up to the older women in her orbit. There’s an innate desire to admire them and to want to be like them. I know this because my cousin and I used to spy on my aunt while she was getting ready to go out to dinner, imitating her with our fingers as she strapped on her bra.

I remember knowing in theory how moms and daughters were supposed to embrace and feel at ease with each other, but I was never able to actually achieve this with my mother.

She looked like a movie poster to me, grainy and glamorous and ethereal, not all the way there.

In college, girls on drugs who smoked cigarettes in fraternity basements looked like my memory of my mother: tragic and theatrical, beautiful and standoffish.

People have a certain demeanor when they’re smoking cigarettes, like they’re listening to a story they’ve heard before, as if they’d...

when you feel sad for someone it’s very hard to resent them, even if they’re hurting you. But it’s also impossible to admire and look up to someone you feel sorry for.

She didn’t even seem surprised. I can’t remember ever seeing her act surprised, which is a quality I now associate with a sane person—the capacity for surprise.

If the most unimaginably terrible things are possible, like your mother sawing her arm off in front of you, then the most magically good things must also be possible, like, well, anything.

I have one good memory of my mother that I hold on to. It begins and ends in about four seconds, like a dream you try to keep when you first wake up but inevitably slips away as the day sets in.

I see my mother standing in the doorframe of our house watching me. She is actually watching me!

The feeling of being watched is the next best thing to being touched. It’s like sunlight on your skin, as though the person watching you is giving you some part of themselves by way of their eyes.

Imagining things into existence is a superpower.

Back then mental illness wasn’t handled openly with flowers and get-well cards like there might have been if she had been sick with cancer.

Or the intimate moments when boys tell me I smell nice even when I’m sweaty?

All dead people should know this: They’re going to matter, even if they think they won’t and even if they don’t want to. I understand now that toward the end, my mother was so sick that she didn’t want to be part of this world any longer.

if an oyster can turn sand into pearls i can turn myself into anything

My friends loved it because my house felt like a mystical playland with vague parental authority on the periphery—the polar opposite of their regimented existences of plastic sippy cups and time-outs. To my friends, my house symbolized freedom. To me, my friends’ houses symbolized a curated life that I both haughtily reviled and desperately craved.

good at running in high school and get recruited to a top running college—but when they get there and are suddenly on their own, their whole world implodes. I personally witnessed this type of saga unfold numerous times during my NCAA career. There’s a huge difference between opening doors for your kid and pushing them through.