Today I am both elated and also little bit heartsick. Proud and also tired.
Yesterday I ran my first half marathon.
I am an unimpressive athlete. Any athleticism I might have possessed as a child was squandered through a life spent largely indoors, staring at computer screens.
As we approached our 6:00 AM start time, I had to push my way back through the crowd to reach my rightful place near the back of the pack. My little brother, who is an actual impressive athlete, flew in for the full marathon, and leading up to the big day, I joked that my goal was just to finish with enough time to catch my breath before he finished — even with my 13 mile head start.
(This was not so much of a joke; he finished less than 30 minutes after I did.)
But I did the thing. Prior to yesterday, my longest run was a week before, when I ran around 11 miles. It took me over 2 hours to do that. I did my very first 13.1 in 2:18, which is an unremarkable time, except that I wasn’t really sure that beating 2:20 was even possible for me and where I was at yesterday. Going into it, 2:20 felt like a reach-for-the-stars-pipe-dream kind of goal.
As I approached the finish, I saw the clock (forgetting that it was based on gun time, which is not when I actually crossed the start) quickly ticking up to 2:20 and so I sprinted the last 20ish meters. I can’t remember the last time I felt as powerful as I did yesterday.
And yet. Today is also an anniversary for a different kind of life event. A year ago today I had a profoundly powerless experience. My feelings today are not all girl power and joy.
Preparing for the half marathon was often very, very tricky because while Missoula has plenty of great places to run, many of them turned out to be off limits to me. My runs were sometimes cut short because something seemingly innocuous happened — the sounds of rustling in the bushes or rocks being kicked up by my very own feet — that left me terribly shaken.
(I can’t actually count the number of times the answer was “rocks being kicked up by my own feet.”)
This was my fear a year ago. As I sat in the hospital room alternatively crying and trying to calm myself down, I could feel places on my personal world map going dark. My world was getting smaller.
I have returned to the park where I was attacked twice since it happened. Both times were last summer. Never in 2016. Once with the detective assigned to my case and again with my youngest sibling.
That second trip started out fine enough. There’s a short VEDA video of us sitting on a fallen tree. What probably doesn’t come across in the video is how proud I am for sitting there. But then we ventured into the part of the path where it happened, and a loud noise behind me gave me a small panic attack. By the time we left the park (hurriedly) my sense of accomplishment was crushed under the effort of trying to steady my breathing and stop my tears. I have not returned since. It’s this weird, stupid bogeyman that I can’t quite seem to conquer.
There are other great trails that I try to run on that have the benefit of not being that park, but the misfortune of being too removed from someone who could hear me cry out if something happened. Sometimes I make it far along those trails, and those are good, accomplished days. Most times, though, I start to get jumpy and nervous when I notice that it has been a few minutes since I last saw another person. Or feeling suspicious and anxious about the one guy I do happen to see out there. I turn around and run back, heart racing a little extra for my nerves.
It’s a little ironic, because when I first starting running, I didn’t want people to see me because I felt so self-conscious. I liked that park for the feeling of seclusion. I felt protected from other human eyes by the cover of trees. Now all that means to me is that a violent stranger can also be protected from the eyes of others.
Some days it makes me very sad and other days it makes me incredibly fucking angry. Either way, it’s often followed by a sense of exhaustion from feeling that way. I am deeply tired of thinking about it.
I can’t express enough how tied to individual experience this feeling is. This fear is not a thing that I experienced before this happened, which is much of why I am so sad and angry and tired. This is something that was taught to me by a traumatic event, not some resigned acceptance of the world as it is.
Because in my clearer mind, I still don’t view the world that way.
I stress this point because when it happened, someone told me, more or less, that my feminism was the problem; that I was some how falsely equating a lack of fear with being a good feminist. That the fight to not be afraid is another kind of victim-blaming.
Which is never what any of this has been about. Nothing I said then or now is about how anybody else should or would cope.
I think about this often when I go to the “rage” place, partially because my trauma was being appropriated for a bullshit political statement, but also because it seems to willfully ignore my own personal feelings and lived experience.
Because as I move forward, that is what this is about. Experiences. All of the many, many experiences that I want to have in this life.
Yesterday was just one of them, and for all the added struggles in getting to that place, it was incredible being there.
From my near-the-back starting place, I could see the herd of neon setting out ahead of me down that road here in beautiful Montana. It was exhilarating to be a part of something in that way. Those first couple miles were probably the most fun I have ever had while running.
I had to be up at 4:30 to catch a bus to the starting line, I slept pretty poorly the night before, and, of course, I was exerting myself on a whole new level, but it was a really magical sort of exhaustion. Around the halfway point I found myself getting kind of emotional about some of the inspirational signs spectators held up.
SHE BELIEVED SHE COULD AND SO SHE DID, YOU GUYS!
For the overwhelming majority of the race, I was so focused on running that I never entirely understood where we were in town — truly, it wasn’t until I could see Higgins, the street where we run the final two tenths of a mile, that I figured it out.
But when I made the final turn onto Higgins I started to get a little teary eyed and choked up — so much so that I actually scared myself for a second and had to calm myself down because it was affecting my breathing.
With a little self-soothing and a lot of encouragement, both internal and in the form of (probably unsanitary) high fives from strangers, I did it. As I have said and keep saying because it’s important to me, I did the thing.
I want the road to doing the thing to be a little less shitty. I want to be able to run all over my lovely town without being a paranoid mess. But much of that is beyond my immediate control.
A year later, I can’t say that I was entirely wrong. The “shrinking” was real and longer lasting than I’d have liked. My map still shows a world that looks a little less accessible than before.
But for all of that, I’ve managed to find ways around those blocked paths. The wealth of new experiences remains attainable, even if all the roads to those places aren’t. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s one that works for me.
One year later, I may not have reclaimed my former running spot, but I am one half marathon stronger.
On to the next.