I know, I know, it’s been a while…
I have been writing, though the words haven’t quite made it out of my mind and onto paper (or a computer screen). What can I say? I’ve been up to a lot—work, spending time with my bi-continental parents while they’re in this half of the hemisphere, and savoring my newfound independence of living alone.
But what hasn’t been on that list? New Year’s resolutions.
To be honest, I feel like New Year’s resolutions bring out the worst in me—the fixated, never satisfied, single-minded, teetering-on-desperate parts of me. The parts I picked up somewhere along this tightrope walk toward adulthood— always feeling like I had to prove my worth by exceeding someone else’s (or perhaps my own) expectations for me.
I’ve always had this chest-tightening anxiety about resolutions, and having to outrun then nagging expectation of failure that seems baked right in. When I set goals, I get lost in them. I lose sight of myself, my wants, my intuition. Somewhere along the way I learned that my worth hangs in the delicate balance of always exceeding whatever goal I set in front of me.
Get into that law school. Write that manuscript. Get that agent. Move to the UK. Run that marathon.
Each time I told myself: Once I get there, I’ll finally feel enough. Finally feel worthy. Finally stop feeling like I’m one misstep away from falling off the tightrope.
And each time, when I got there, it wasn’t enough. One more mile. One more fellowship. One more shiny, exclusive title pretending to be prestige.
When I found myself approaching 25—almost two years ago—I started to realize something. I wanted to leave that part of me behind. It wasn’t serving me. It was burning me out, pulling me further and further from my sense of self. My decisions had stopped being about what I liked, what I wanted. They had become a way of filling this ever-present void, this narrative of lack.
It wasn’t one big epiphany, but a quiet, persistent hunger that grew in me. I wanted to look at myself—my choices, my body, my personality, my environment, my feelings—and not constantly see a list of things to fix.
So, to put that part of me to rest, I decided to run a marathon 😆.
I didn’t tell anyone I was training. Well, except my therapist and my law school advisor about a month before the race, when I was hitting my limits physically (to be expected) but more-so mentally.
I didn’t tell anyone because that’s just what I do, I guess.
I didn’t tell anyone when I applied to Harvard. Didn’t tell anyone (except my brother—the OG fan of my writing) when I wrote the novel. Hell, I didn’t even tell my family I was moving to the UK (during a pandemic, no less) until a couple months before.
My therapist asked me why. Didn’t I want support?
But it hadn’t even occurred to me that telling people might mean support. I was so sure it would just mean more of what I already felt swimming in my head—doubt, judgment, accusations of being a fraud. I convinced myself people would think I didn’t belong. Not as a writer. Not as a marathon runner. Not as a happy girl who watches telly with a cuppa and biscuit on rainy London mornings.
I was so sure of it. People who look like me— Black girls, especially ones of a particular shade and with curves—don’t do that, can’t be that.
I thought I was protecting myself. My heart, my mind, my dreams.
So I didn’t tell anyone about the marathon.
I ran until my feet blistered over. I traveled back to Delaware every two weeks to weather the longer runs alone because running through the crowded streets of Boston felt like running through a gauntlet of eyes that doubted me, mocked me, told me I couldn’t.
I think I was ashamed.
Ashamed to let the people who care about me see me chase something so raw. Ashamed to admit I was letting myself fully tap into a part of me I didn’t like but I feared was all there was too me—a girl with an isolating penchant for obsession and fixation. Afraid to see disbelief in their eyes when I told them.
Their lips might say wow, but their eyes? Their eyes would say: You’re not the stick-thin waify granola white person I think of when I think of marathons.
That thought would twist in me, stabbing at this old pain that’s never fully healed—that I don’t fit into anyone’s idea of excellence. AndI couldn’t rationalize that pain away with thoughts that it’s “just in my head” because that was the message I’d constantly received throughout life–that I’d have to labor to be loved, suffer to be seen as excellent.
I didn’t tell anyone because running was tangled up in everything I was going through. The more constricted I felt in my head—the more time I had on my hands and not in the hands of the perfect boyfriend I wanted, in the company of friends I was convinced were constantly annoyed by me, or with my family I felt isolated from, the more I ran.
It started with 10ks in senior year of undergrad, when I isolated myself from my friends after study abroad. But during COVID, with more time and more loneliness, 6 miles became 10, became 15, became… a marathon.
The 26.2 became a measurement of my loneliness. My discontent. My way of trying to make soul food out of scraps.
But reaching that resolution didn’t necessarily feel… good.
It felt sad. Lonely.
No one was there cheering for me and that was on me—most people in my life didn’t even know I ran seriously. They just saw me disappear for hours and come back ravenous, walking like I’d aged a decade. The hardest part wasn’t the physical toll. It was the emotional one.
On the day of the marathon my mind wasn’t blank, the way it usually is when I run.This time, each mile brought a younger version of myself alongside me: afraid, desperate, trying, hurting, expecting to be disbelieved, not good enough.I struggled to believe myself. To feel proud of myself. It’s like that old adage: if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
If you cross the personal finish lines of your life with no one there to cheer, does it matter? Does it count?
I realized I’ve been chasing goals that didn’t seem to want me, bending them to accept me. Telling myself I was just doing it for me… to know or to prove to myself that I could.
that I didn’t need anyone to care.
The truth is (as icky as it sounds) I did and I do. I care what people think. I wanted to feel seen. I wanted to be affirmed, and lying to myself chasing prestige with my guards so high I couldn’t be seen left me feeling alone. And, at that point of my life, ‘alone’ stung with the quiet pain of failure. Because my real goal was always just to feel good enough to belong, and yet the isolating rigid nature of my resolutions kept the walls around me higher and higher up.
So instead of setting resolutions now I’m exploring what it feels like to just… be—to be present and answer to desire, not rigid resolutions.
So yeah.
I’m back.
This is what’s been on my heart and mind this week. More writing coming soon. <3
Leaving you with an entry from my ‘23 delight journal, written a couple of days after the marathon:
It’s the last night of my early twenties and my big toe is (still) red. Blistering and angry from the race on Saturday. I’m not though. I feel…peace?.
I have way too much going on this week and I still don’t know if I’m gonna end up doing a last minute birthday dinner tomorrow–too many people, conflicting schedules, things to do, emails to send, jobs to secure—- but, somehow, I feel peace.
On Saturday I ran and I ran and I ran. I ran from and into and out of doubt. I ran circles around pain, I ran against the wind until I surrendered and rode it. I ran. Each mile was like I was revisiting a younger version of myself: scared, determined, fuck-it-I’m-going-for-it, hail?-in-MARCH?-really-God?!-can-the-road-be-easy-for-once?, why-did-I-think-I-could-do-this-again?, oh-that’s-right-I-can-do-this, no-one-will-believe-me, happy, this’ll-be-over-soon, can-I-do-this?, I-can-do-this.
Triumphant.
Triumph is a marathon. And when I crossed the finish line I put to rest a chapter, a girl who always had to run run run to be enough. A mile for every year and then a victory lap. I like that. The first half of my twenties I ran to every finish line I could find just to prove to myself that I could make it. And as sad as that is, I am grateful for the grit of that girl.
And because I love her, I want to give her peace.
I want to position her to know what it is to feel enough as she is and not enough because of what she does.
I want to position her to receive acceptance. To be (re)born and handled warmly.
So here I am, five minutes from what feels like a new chapter, and for once I’m not waiting for the finish line.
3/28/2023 The Eve of Twenty-Five
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