Why I run.

The first time I ran was 03/09/2005, and it was an act of pure anger and frustration.  I was overly committed to school and extra curricular activities and working three (3!) part-time jobs for a total of 60-70 hours per week.  I was desperately unhealthy, hardly slept, never cooked, ate fast food practically every single day and washed it down with a 20oz Dr. Pepper, and stayed up drinking with my friends and roommates a few nights a week.  It was the typical college student's lifestyle, really, and I was a very sheltered 19-year-old living on her own for the first time.  I did not know or understand myself at all, I was unaware of what I was doing to my body or mind by letting things get so out of hand.

I forget exactly what set me off, but I believe it was a conflict I had with a good friend at the time.  I remember sitting in my car and being so overwhelmed with anxiety and anger than I literally did not know what to do.  A couple months earlier I had started making some positive changes in my life - I stopped eating meat, cut out soda entirely, and started teaching myself to cook (George Foreman did most of the work for me at first).  As I sat there, feeling like my brain was about to implode, an idea came to me.  I would go to the gym. 

Mind you, I had joined this gym the year before and, aside from one sad attempt at a yoga class, had never worked out there (my lack of financial management skills was also a problem back then, obviously).  I walked in and, in what became my gym-going tradition, immediately stepped onto the scale.  I was hoping hard that I would be under 200lbs, so the number I saw absolutely floored me. 

242.

It really was a life changing moment.  I realized in a flash how ridiculous my life had become, how I had let everything get out of control.  It was also a liberating moment, though.  I understood that my body was not something that was handed to me, a burden for me to carry.  The number on the scale was not something that "happened to me."  I brought it on myself, through a lifelong series of poor choices.  So I walked over to the treadmill, still in jeans and a t-shirt, pushed a few buttons, and started running.  I clocked three miles that day.  That feeling afterwards - of exhaustion, accomplishment, control, pride - is what kept me going back almost every day for the next four months, until I left San Diego and moved to Kenya.

Health is not a state of being - it is a choice you make every day.  2005 was a pivotal year, in that I realized that I needed to make better choices.  The process of losing weight, learning to cook, eating healthier, becoming active - all of it - is ongoing.  I learn more every day, and am always trying to figure out how to apply what I've learned in a way that works for my body and circumstances.  I can't say that it gets easier - I go on plenty of runs that feel just as hard as that first one.  But, somewhere out there on the road, running stopped being something I had to do.  It stopped being an escape, or a necessary evil.  It became essential, joyful, a daily reminder to treat myself well and be present in the moment.  I want, I need, to run.  As silly as I was, as much as I would like to jump in a time machine, go back 10 years, and slap some sense into my teenaged self, I can't help but be thankful for that low point in my life.  I would be here, running happy, without it.