Back To Where It Began....

For my true final post to sneakers n wine, I felt it best to end in the place it began…..

A physical therapist whom once worked with me on my hip and ankle, said to me once, “ I won’t tell you to stop running because I know runners are all running away or towards something. ”  I smiled knowing why I ran all these years.  I wasn’t running towards or away from anything. I ran because I had something to prove….

A very long time ago, when I was a little girl I had been running in an after school running program at my elementary school.  I was in second grade. One day running by the top part of the  field at my school, I saw a boy from my neighborhood. He was older and went to a different school so I didn’t see him often outside of our neighborhood. I waved, happy to see him  and he yelled out across the field, heckling me in front of everyone, that I was too short to run and my chicken legs were too skinny to ever run fast enough.   I kept running by and as soon as I was past where I thought he could no longer see me, I burst into tears and cried my eyes out until my father picked me up.  I was crushed this boy I had admired and looked up to so much could be so mean.

Of course, my father was concerned at my dramatic crying and inquired.  I told him what happened.  Growing up in a very old fashioned Irish Catholic household, my father and mother immediately called the boy’s parents to my home. A couple hours later,  I clearly recall a serious conference/court like meeting with my parents,  the boy, and his parents around our dining room table.  I was devastated even more than I was from the boy’s heckling, for being such a dramatic brat that this whole meeting had come to occur.  I remember looking at the boy thinking he will never talk to me again and I don’t think he did for many many years.  Standing looking at the hardwood floors, he apologized to me and I accepted avoiding eye contact with everyone as I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment.  

In fairness I should disclose this same boy had always been very kind to me, teaching me to dribble a basketball and letting me throw it underhand so I could get in in the hoop and never stealing the basketball and always giving me a chance to score.  I did also have very skinny boney legs and am a very short person. And when I did see this boy grown many years later he generously claimed to have no recollection of the incident at all but remembered I dressed up as Laura Ingalls Wilder for Halloween every year and made him watch Little House on The Prairie after school everyday.

The next day I went to the running program, I was determined to prove I could run just as fast as most of the kids.  I ran so hard that day I clearly remember the pain of the cramps in my side and pushing beyond it to keep up with the boys in my age group.  And I did.  I didn’t want to lose or be too slow ever again.

From that day forward, any time someone told me I couldn’t, something was impossible, I wasn’t good enough, or my world fell apart, I’d put on my sneakers and run, proving over and over that I can do anything and that nothing is impossible no matter what life gives me, that boy’s words echoing in my mind that I couldn’t.  My running sneakers and chicken legs have taken me probably thousands of miles through loss, grief, joy, and gratefulness, guiding me along my journey one stride at a time.  That boy’s mean words that made me cry that  day echoed in my mind for years, motivating me to prove him wrong and  never give up. When illness disabled me, I ran to prove I wouldn't be disabled. When I buried my four year old son right after the new year, I ran in the freezing rain of winter to feel something again, anything and prove I hadn’t died too.  When I lost my marriage, my home, and nearly my other children, and didn’t have a dollar to my name, I ran to prove that I could still stand up and not be crushed under the weight of the world.

All these years later, I am finally at peace with having proved what I needed to to myself and to that boy and to the world and I’m ready  to let it go now and move on with what comes next from this exciting universe.  I am comfortable  with who I have become. I don’t feel the NEED to run the way I once did.  But that doesn’t mean in the heat of a race when my legs are getting tired, or when challenged,  I don’t still hear the whispers of that boy telling me I can’t fueling a fierce fight in me, still, to win and never give up.