Week #10 - Wild Thoughts

Some reflections on taking off the boot and reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

“The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.”

I’m reading a long sought after book - Wild by Cheryl Strayed. In the book, she undergoes a backpacking tour on the Pacific Crest Trail following the death of her mother, her divorce, the beginning of her heroin addiction. Cheryl is woefully unprepared and faces a series of significant challenges, each one bigger than the last. Her feet are bloody and blistered because her shoes are too big. She almost collapses from thirst after an eighteen mile hike to a water cooler that is riddled with bullet holes. A bull charges at her. And so on. But the pain is almost the point - with each step that she takes, Cheryl proves to herself that she can move beyond something, that the only way to get through something is to turn around or move forward.

For so long, I envisioned running the marathon as something akin to a backpacking trail on the PCT. Each step would bring me closer to my goal of running 26.2 miles. It would be hard but rewarding. This milestone would change me forever and I would be a marathoner.

I never felt like an athlete growing up. I developed asthma in third grade and one of my core memories is sinking into my couch while watching home movies as my breath got shorter and shorter. My mom took me to the hospital and I collapsed on the street because I didn’t have enough breath in my body to walk to the Emergency Room. Despite this, I played recreational soccer and basketball all throughout high school - total disaster. I was always made to be the goalie because I was a detriment on the field and I would sing loudly to myself whenever the opposing team ran towards me with the ball. It didn’t help. In basketball, I was usually the tallest and crowded by the opposing team until they realized I had no dexterity whatsoever and they would slow dissipate amongst my more talented teammates. When I got the ball, I often ran up the wrong side of the court with my coaches and teammates screaming at me. I mistook it for cheers - so sue me!

That’s all to say that when I started to run seriously during COVID-19, at the ripe age of twenty-three, it became a salve to how I felt about my own athleticism and my body. The astonishment I felt when I ran two miles, then four miles, then eight miles, and more and more, I felt like the strongest person in the world. When I ran my first half-marathon, I felt the perception of myself shift. I found so much joy in seeing my splits change, researching the right kind of footwear, doing speed runs with my friends, that running became one of the first things that I mentioned when introducing myself. The marathon in particular, the New York Marathon, felt like the ultimate authority on whether I was a runner, whether I was an athlete, and on the most dramatic level, whether I felt good on my body.

When I found out that I had a stress fracture on my shin in July and would be unable to run the marathon in November, I struggled deeply with my perception of myself and my body. I wasn’t able to walk around my neighborhood, let alone run, and the only mission that I had was to rest. I discovered how truly inaccessible New York City was, in particular the subway system. I walked up and down flights of stairs with my velcro boot, wincing in pain. If I was lucky enough to use an elevator, it smelled like urine. I can’t imagine the difficulties I would have experienced if I was more permanently disabled. At night reflexively, I would rotate my ankle and hear it click again, again, and again. I was in pain but I was more depressed by the lack of utility on my right leg - my muscles had swollen from the lack of moment and my ankle felt like a branch that would snap on impact.

When I got my boot off, I practically skipped to the subway station. On a zoom call with my wonderful therapist Sarah, I turned my computer around to show her my unadorned leg.

“Look - the boot is finally off !” I exclaimed with a big grin on my face.

“Wonderful!” Sarah said. “I know it’s been challenging for you.” Then she leaned forward.

“Veronica, may I ask you a question that you might not be ready to hear?” I nodded, a bit uneasy.

“Do you think you were perhaps, a bit impatient in regards to the boot?” She looked at me with a playful look on her face, her wavy hair framing her spectacles."

Impatient? I reflected on the question. Giving up on the marathon, wearing the boot, felt like one of the darker moments of my life. It felt like a step backwards in a period of my life that was supposed to be running forward past a finish line.

I tried to look at the larger picture. I cried to my partner, family and friends. My body felt bloated, stale, and utterly useless. I took ubers. I upped my Lexapro prescription on the recommendation of my psychiatrist. I started this blog and I made the decision to apply to graduate school.

Cheryl was right - the universe could take what it wanted and never give it back. I may never run the marathon. Nonetheless, I had taken myself through the experience of training, injuring, failing, crying, resting, writing, strengthening, and trying to find myself in the process of healing. I normally resist stories that tie pain with lessons - I would not go through the injury again if I had the choice. However, I feel proud of myself that I was able to move through the process and discover new things about myself that reified my sense of self and purpose, if perhaps a bit impatiently. It’s impossible to paddle against the river of life and I had allowed it to carry me to where I am now. I didn’t drown.

“I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.”