Running from Grief
The one night I accidentally ran a half-marathon to stop myself from crying
I used to run a lot.
Considering my legs are a little over two feet five inches, the fact that I used to be able to run a six-minute mile was always an incredible feat.
I stopped running after an injury. I started swimming instead, coming up with any excuse not to run again.
Until October 24, 2019.
The day they found his body.
Until I spent a few nights in the hospital from stress, not eating, or drinking for three days.
Until I looked in the mirror and saw I lost weight. When I left the hospital, everyone saw I lost weight.
The scale said fifteen pounds less.
I was one hundred and ten before I cried it off. Now I was an unhealthy ninety-five.
And fear took over me.
The images of blood spatter decorated my walls, social media flooded with his name, face, and headlines. My phone vibrated with no end in sight. I would sit in my indoor hammock, hands shaking as I knitted my sorrows away, trying to keep the bloody images from my head.
I spent the weekends with friends, trying to drown myself in distractions. I know good people, but as an extroverted introvert, my brain screamed for silence.
But in the silence, I saw his bloodied face. He smiled at me, told me he was happy and that I had nothing to do with his decision.
But I did.
He would reassure me with bloody hands that I was stronger than this. He said he forgave me, this was his decision, but I couldn’t live with it.
So in the dead of the night, I started running.
I hadn’t run for a while, I had run a half marathon two years ago and tore five ligaments in my right foot on mile eight. Before the injury, I was going to finish in one hour and forty-five minutes.
That’s with an incredibly hilly course, and the most I ran before this was about eight miles at a ten-minute pace with a group. Underprepared for the arduous terrain, my right foot connected with a small rock.
I was set off balance, enough to stretch my ligaments. Enough so that when I landed, I not only hyperextended my foot, but I also rolled a few feet down an asphalt road.
I got up, blood on my knees, my foot had already begun to swell. I continued the half-marathon, limping so badly that many people asked me if I needed an ambulance.
I saw my time crossing: two hours and forty-five minutes. A full hour behind what I paced earlier. Tired, disgruntled, and injured, I ate my share of bagels, pizza, and oranges before limping to my room.
On the seventh floor with no working elevator.
I woke up the next day and I couldn’t walk.
For the next few months, the doctor warned me not to run. So I got into swimming. My mind would loosen up when I would swim but it wasn’t the same as running.
Especially now that running scared me.
When I finally started running again, I felt my body break into sweats. I would go slow, have bad form and make as many excuses to quit. So I stopped completely, using those excuses.
Imagine my surprise when I started running with no goal in mind.
At first, I wasn’t aware of what was going on. My brain was on fire, everything was scary: the lights, the cars, the darkness, the gunshots ringing in the distance. I just kept running and running until I got to the river, about five miles away. My smartwatch beeped telling me I ran seven miles, in cowboy boots, in about fifty-eight minutes.
I hadn’t even noticed it beeping for the other six miles.
I watched the lights flicker on the river and in the darkness I let myself grieve, the images of all the people who looked for him, the blood, rifle, his body, his face, his smile just overwhelmed me and I kept thinking that his death was on my hands.
After all, I was the one who issued him the ammunition, meant to just shoot targets in a field. I didn’t know that the ammunition I gave him would be the ammunition to end him.
But it was then that he spoke to me again, this time he looked as I remembered him:
“Mem, I would have found another way. I was really sad, this isn’t your fault. I love you, you’ve always been an older sister to me. Just… I couldn’t see the light. No light would have brought me out, even the love that you give the world. Remember, just because I’m gone doesn’t mean you get to turn your light and love off.”
I am fully aware this was my imagination reaching out to me, but for once my brain started to understand that I forgave him.
I was having a hard time forgiving myself.
And so when that final conversation happened, I picked up my coat and ran the seven miles home in the darkness. My watch beeped again: fifty-five minutes.
I’m not as fast as I used to be, there’s a little bit of fear in every step I take when I run now, but there’s a certain sense of joy and calmness that comes with it. Some people smoke, some people drink, some people meditate.
I meditate when I run now. It used to be when I knit, when I drew, painted, sang, but now it’s when I run.
I used to hate running so much, but I was usually pretty good at it. Now I don’t necessarily enjoy it, but I understand it’s purpose: to compartmentalize my pain and grief because it won’t end, it just needs a place to go.
