My First Race Without You
My First Race Without You
I am not always awake to the world, not always thinking about the big things. Today it is just the spoon of sugar in my coffee, the one leaf unfurled, first of the green on the tree outside my bedroom window, a sock without a mate stuck under the covers at the foot of the bed. The brown and white bird staring at me as I rinse my dish in the sink -- not a chickadee, or a titmouse; I can't name him, but that's alright. He can't name me either.
The sugar settles to the bottom and the coffee tastes sweeter the closer I am to finishing. I haven't matched my socks in weeks, all in a pile in a bin in my closet, the way you used to leave yours. A puzzle to solve one pair at a time, day by day, till the pile is all dirty and it starts over.
Every black Honda Civic I see is you, even when I'm not missing you. When will I stop missing you? Do I want to? You will always be missing now. Even your empty space is something I'm in relation to. How is your empty space, on the days I don't notice it? Why is it so easy sometimes, the not-noticing -- shouldn't it be hard? Why is it so much harder to think you feel the same way -- to miss your laugh and then think about you laughing now, easier without me. I'm a hypocrite.
The sugar in my coffee. The green leaf on the tree. My clean socks. The black car on the highway that passes, that isn't you.
Today, I ran my first race without you in 3 years. It was a triumph. My lungs were practically smiling, my legs barely spent, asking for more. But the ease of it was anticlimactic. Even the ease of you not being there with me. Running the race without you was part of the accomplishment, but all I want to do is tell you how proud I am of myself. To tell you I ran 3.2 miles in one go without stopping, faster today than I ever have before and you're the one who would really understand, you're the one who helped me believe I could be better and push harder and then I did it on my own and I didn't need you, and wouldn't you be so proud to know that? I always had to prove I didn't need you; maybe now you'd believe me.
When I didn't get that internship I applied for, you didn't know what to say to make it better so instead you read me the entire chapter on interval training from that running book you love:
“You can do very nearly anything. Haven’t you figured that out?”
(...) Just as each repetition made the next seem more and more impossible, he knew that without question he would do it. There was no refuge in injury, his body could not be injured in this way. There was no refuge in mercy, there was nothing to forgive and no one to issue dispensation. And at last he saw: there was no refuge in cowardice, because he was not afraid. There was no alternative, it just had to be done. (...)
“I know,” Cassidy said. (...) “But it is a very hard thing to have to know.” *
Today was my first race I ran without you in three years. There will be many more, I'm sure. Nothing's stopping me from keeping on; I'll still run, for me, like I have been. But I'll still miss the solidarity; I'll still think of you when I do well.
I can see your face telling me about your run in the thunder, home soaking wet and peeling off your sweats, pure joy and abandon and you shared it with me. The feeling will be a bird on the other side of the window, on a branch just outside, both of us without names but the day goes on, the sugar is stirred, we leave our branches and return.
*excerpt from “Once a Runner” by John L. Parker Jr.
Christie Flemming