Growing up my mom worked as a housekeeper for a successful entertainment lawyer. Every summer my younger sister, mom and I, we'd go stay in their large home in East Hampton, NY and her bosses, a wonderful warm and caring couple with 3 children, would often invite me to go running with them, so much so that it became a routine we maintained for several summers to come. I became a runner running the streets of East Hampton NY with both of them on my side, and afterwards just me continuing the habit; often hopping by the beach to look at and hear the ocean waves before carrying on my route. It was my special thing that I did, it was my savior, my love, even then. Although I won't share deep intimate details here about my childhood, in my home life at that time things were not going so well (and that is putting it very mildly), but running took me away from all that, an hour at a time. The streets of East Hampton, NY were quiet, peaceful and very wide and the extravagant million dollar houses sat on large, perfectly cared-for lawns. The air always smelled like fresh cut grass combined with honey suckle and the ocean was audible, specially at night as we drifted to sleep under the expansive star-filled skies.
But running did not end with the summers, I grew older and as a teen would run laps around the Reservoir in Central Park, which sat about a quarter mile from my high school, Marymount School of NY in Manhattan. This was around the time of the infamous and horrific Central Park rape and I remember even then taking some needed precautions, of course, but thinking to myself that there is NO WAY I will stop running. I was fearless. Running gave me a feeling of invincibility and I was hooked.
Then, when I was in college at Smith, in Western Massachusetts, I ran there too....I would wake early and either run around campus or run around the track indoors with my anorexic roommate that never did anything but complain about being fat, while all along being 1/2 my weight. Each one of these periods in time I would have such a strong emotional need and connection to running that I knew it was a life-sustaining kind necessity, just like water or food are to us, no doubt in my mind this was ab.so.lute.ly something I could not live without.
Even today, I can safely say I would not be alive if it were not for running. Although I have never been officially identified as having clinical depression, I know I have struggled with deep dark feelings and seen rock bottom so many times. Only the continued practice of running can truly fight and fend back these dark places of depression that creep up the minute I let off the gas. Luckily, I feel a very strong need from my body if I even go two days without running. Two things begin to happen in strong unrelenting force One, I start to notice every damn runner I see and secretly wish I were them. Two, I begin to envision my own legs running no matter what song comes on the radio. God forbid a highly compatible running song comes on, then the feeling to go out and run will totally take over and infect every thought until I fulfill the desire.
Tomorrow I need to run 12 miles as part of my marathon training for marathon #7. As always, I don't know how I will even begin to wrap my mind AND body around the distance, but deep inside I know I will finish it. Not one doubt in my mind. I look forward to the adventure of greeting in the sunlight and watching the sky turn from dark, to brightness and observe the world very slowly wake to a new day.
No comments:
Post a Comment