A REDDIT THREAD ON LOVE & RUNNING
Last year, I forgot how to stand up.
One morning in May, my body determined that balance, something that should be hired and made permanent when we are toddlers, would be fired from my skillset. As if it were an optional add-on, riding a bike or pulling a perfect espresso, and not a fundamental phase of human development.
This was particularly confusing because I had always been quite good at standing. I hadn’t started learning any languages recently, nor begun any complex studies, so there was really no cause for my brain to start burning old files to make way for new ones. And yet, there I stood at my regular gym in suburbia, staring at my feet and willing them to move like a Nike sponsored Matilda.
It started that morning at the gym when, after 12 years of regular running, I couldn’t remember the steps. The previous morning, I had done a comfortable recovery 5km at my usual pace and gone on happily with my day. The next, I couldn’t take a single step without thinking I was about to fall. Every pace I tried, my ankles started to cross and my head swerved violently into a lane my body wasn’t in. I leapt off the treadmill, thinking it must be a wry neck that I’d slept on wrong. But, as I kept going back morning after grimacing morning, it happened again and again. On the fourth or fifth attempt, I sat on the back of the machine and cried.
I had never been a natural runner so I had to work hard at it and constantly. My coltish legs and disjointed hips were never invited to join a high school team and I wasn’t born wiry and well connected. It took 12 years of regular practice not to feel like a thief using “runner” to describe myself. And I was late to it. I was 18 in a hostel gym in San Francisco and it was my gap year. I was about to start acting school so I treated starting running like the role of a lifetime. The task was to embody “runner”. So I did. 9km/minute felt like a death hurtle through space and time but I was running, it was fucking undeniable, and it felt incredible. I held the times I snuck down to the gym after that close to my chest - running felt a bit like wearing lingerie. A little secret that put an extra lift in my step. Now, I felt undressed by my own brain.
I Googled furiously, because that always goes well. Wading through the classic “cancer, rare Estonian rabies? cancer again” results, I figured out that the same thing had happened to a few people in the world. I clicked on a forum thread that someone called MarathonMike1 had written in, desperately describing his sudden inability to move like he had known how to for years – as long as he could remember, he typed. It was more than forgetting some keyboard shortcuts, this felt like a body dementia. I read on. Some people described the same thing happening, but were diagnosed alcoholics and it had come on as a symptom of the disease. MarathonMike1 was sober and had been for two decades. There was applause and some questions from the group. I shut my laptop, threw out my bottle of occasional tequila and decided to rest for a week and see what happened. Nothing, for a week or two.
Then, it started to affect my driving. I’d get sudden swerving lurches to one side as I streamed along familiar roads. My vision swam like it had mistaken highways for oceans. It felt like some great hands were pulling me to the side, trying to bench me or whirl me around a cerebral corner to tell me something in private. In the first few months of this happening, I told no-one. Not highly recommended behaviour but it was the lockdown so there wasn’t a great appetite for more bad news. Instead, I emailed a solicitor to ask if I needed anyone “official” to cite my will before it became legally binding. I was sure this was it. The circles in my head were tracing the guts of death. I was dying. I had to be. In a few moments, my partner at the time noticed me staggering but she was anxious-avoidant and busy with work. When I saw her for those two nights in eight months, it was only to roll over and say “welcome home” before drifting back to sleep – no standing required. So as not to worry her, I turned to my “Suddenly_Can’t_Run?” question thread for solace and companionship.
I read the new responses and accounts of genuine loss and heartbreak from people whose running joy had come to a shuddering halt. Judy_F had found the tumour. When I scrolled past that post, I sat on the toilet and howled. These usernames were my closest confidantes. Judy_F had only just welcomed her grandson into the world and they were about to become ships in the good night. I was bonded to all of them in quiet worry, invested in their highs and lows, their wins and our shared loss. That forum felt more like a wake that was for all, and none, of us. Aside from Judy_F, we were all privately dying of nothing. But we all wanted to survive for something. We shared our reasons. KARINABOSTON# had a holiday booked. Manny.Estevez had kids. I said I couldn’t die before my dad or it would kill him. A few people laughed at that, someone offered a thumbs up. I asked myself if I loved these people. I didn’t answer.
In September, my then-partner told me she was cheating and I stopped trying to run. I stopped going online. I just stopped. Grief ran its course through me. At least something had legs. I let it wrack and knock through me for weeks. My body changed. I grew softer and more adaptable. I felt more like water than ever, washing onto the beaches I was pushed towards, lapping against rocks and going again out to sea. A month or so later, my sister let me drive to the shops. During the tumult, I had told her everything about the head-spins and the jelly legs. Sensibly, she wouldn’t let me in a car alone but today, she’d decided I was well enough. I drove like a fucking dream. No head-spins, no sudden dips into other dimensions. Walking around the supermarket, my legs felt strong and connected to the ground. After a year of constant battle, my body was saying yes. Yes, yes, yes.
In January, I tried running again. I clocked 6km at 5:50km/minute and every step felt like release. It was an old route, but there was a new track in me and I was learning it by touch. One foot, the next, the next. Gently feeling out the way to a future I’d never imagined having to run towards. When I got to the end, I started screaming and slapping my face. To see if something would break again, to see if I was still fragile enough to return to the bends. Nothing. I could still see clearly. My heartbeat was in my neck, where it belonged. I didn’t realised how much I’d missed it.
In March, I found out that the night before I lost my balance at the gym was the same night my ex had slept with someone else for the first time. I stopped drinking after that. I started eating meat again after two decades of strict vegetarianism. I put milk in my coffee after a lifetime of black. Because I now had proof that the body does more than “do”. It intuits, absorbs, responds. It has its own intelligence and needs, separately from those the brain puts upon it. As I understand it, my body knew what had happened that night and was trying to warn me in the morning. The bends changed everything about how I live with my body. I’m feeding it from all directions, introducing it to as much variety, as many cuisines, textures and experiences that I can while it grows up and decides what it wants to be. Now, I’m raising it more like a child than a pet - something that can, and will, make its own choices. All I can do is make suggestions and watch it go. And go. And run. God, I love watching it run.
Every few months, I’ll check in to “Suddenly_Can’t_Run?” to see how everyone’s doing. KARINABOSTON# loved Mauritius and can’t wait to go back. Manny’s taken up cycling and his wife can’t get enough of his new thighs. Judy_F’s son joined the chat to invite us all to her funeral service but now he stays for the chat.
Mike’s coaching him to get to the next New York Marathon, which he says he’ll be running for all of us.
Love,
TN