28 April 2008

To the Man Chasing Me with a Knife: a love letter

Right before I ran my second marathon, one of my friends posted a comment on my Facebook page: I've never understood running... unless, of course, someone is chasing you with a knife. IS someone? I told her that I'd shared her attitude--and expressed it in the same words--right up to the day I started running. But that response wasn't the first one that came to mind: Of course there is a man chasing me with a knife! I was surprised because, well, I don't usually think in exclamation points.

My feet point in different directions. Neither of those directions is forward. I've been told by people who don't really understand the gestation methods of birds that I run like a pregnant duck. I'm horribly, horribly slow. Picked last for teams in PE in elementary school slow. Outrun by chubby woman in her forties in college health class. You know, slow. And I look like a hot mess while doing it. For most of my life I've avoided running like... like something people avoid. Hard.

Then I met the man with the knife. He sorta tapped my shoulder a time or two in college, and I put on a pair of trainers and made a few big silly loops around the university fitness center. I'm going to catch you, he hollered after me as I gallumphed around the track, and I'm going to make you FAAAAAAAAAT. But then I got all sweaty and gross-feeling. I was listening to a lot of Sleater-Kinney then and quickly convinced myself a sensible punk rock feminist would go shower and have a big bowl of rice chex. So I turned my back on the man with a knife and did just that. Mmm. Rice chex.

The man with a knife showed back up after college. My boyfriend then ran a lot. Sunday afternoons I'd hang out in his apartment or, more specifically, in his bathtub accompanied by Mr Bubble and a library book, while he ran a dozen miles or something. The boyfriend. Not Mr Bubble. Then he'd shower and we'd go get dinner. I ate a lot Wendy's then, and the man with a knife started whispering in my ear I'm going to make you FAAAAAAAAAT and unhealthy. You'll wheeze every time you climb stairs. You'll get that delicious dill sauce from your Wendy's veggie pita all over your third chin--and no one will tell you. Then he'd laugh maniacally. A few times a week I'd go outside and run up and down my absurdly long-named street and feel the tickle of his hot, dill-saucy onion breath on my sweaty neck.

The boyfriend and I broke up. I moved across the city. He moved across the country. I changed jobs, and I moved again. The man with a knife must've sneaked into my new building when I buzzed in the pizza delivery guy. I'm going to make you FAAAAAAAAAT, so fat no one will ever, under any circumstance, want to see you naked, much less ask you out for a drink. And it's just as well, because you've got an awful personality. I'm going to make you die all alone. And while I'm at it, I'm going to stick you with a life of lousy jobs and cat tchotkes in your cubicle. The knife was cold, and I could half-feel its tip against the bones of my neck. I tried to ease my tense shoulders somewhere past my ear lobes and put on my trainers and went out for a run.

My neighborhood was full of flowering trees and wide, black asphalt. It was kind of nice, really. Families out for walks said hello. Other runners sprinted past with a cheerful hey, girl, on your left. Golden retrievers strained at their leashes to give my slow moving feet a friendly sniff.

Funding came through for me to go back to school, so I headed back to Missouri for grad school. I spent a few months in my hometown, camping out in the guest room at my folks' house with my cat. The man with a knife knows his fucking geography and made his way north. You live with your parents. You're such a loser. Such a FAAAAAAAAAAAT LOOOOOOOOSER. You'll suck at grad school. You'll be broke and living with your parents in this lame little town for the rest of your lame little life--and you'll wear Wal Mart stretchpants. My parents had a treadmill, and I got on it and watched the miles tick by. I got off the treadmill, had a stretch and a glass of water, and hopped back on. Halfway through the summer, I charged the entry fees for my first marathon to my credit card. A fuckin' poor choice for a girl who runs like a pregnant duck and who has no job. My fingers shook a little when I filled in the entry form. Hey, you, I puffed over my shoulder to the man chasing me with a knife, fuck off.

My first marathon didn't go quite so well. The second one went just slightly better. But I'm signing up for a third one in December. I have a job. I go to school. I run most days, and the man with a knife is always just slightly behind me. I can hear his footsteps flagging in the distance some days. Other days he's close enough I can smell the garlic on his breath and hear him swearing and shouting his curses. He sounds a little out of breath.

I'm not saying I'm not afraid anymore, that I'm not troubled by all those little voices that remind me I'm not as good at anything as I could be or as kind to anyone as I should be or that, no matter how often or how far I run, I will always be distinctly pear-shaped. I'm not saying I wake up every day sure there's more to my identity than my (not entirely skinny) ass in my skinny jeans, much less than that I wake up confident I bear the mark of God's unmerited good graces. I'm not saying I never feel picked last in the gym class of life.

I'm saying that I like running. I like the way my breath sounds in my ears and feels in my lungs. I like the way my feet feel thumping against the asphalt. I like the coolness of wind in my face. I like the heat of the sun on my skin. I like sweetness of water when I'm thirsty and the richness of food when I'm hungry. There's a kind of a grace here: gratitude at finding my next breath, the wonder of discovering I can lift and lower my foot one time and then another. It's an everday grace: a billion breaths, a million steps over the course of our three score and ten.

Some days, I stop running and gasp for breath and squint up into the sun, and the thunder of my pulse in my ears beats out any other voices. Some days I look over my shoulder and see only the looping gray road I've traveled stretching behind me. When I start moving again the one two one two of my feet on the pavement says

amen

amen

alleluia

and

amen.