running in place: updates, an essay, & the next marathon

[06]: Joy Soldier

sunflowers in berlin this weekend

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Sarah here,

Welcome to this edition of Joy Soldier. It’s marathon szn so the topic is aptly “running.”

I’ll discuss running away (ICYMI: I moved to Spain), running home (been digging into some serious self-study) and running marathons (both literal and figurative).

love you all very much,

sw

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quick hits

• Location: Barcelona, Spain

• Time: 4:47 PM CST / 10:47 AM ET

• What I’m Eating: UberEatsed Flax & Kale 4x due to Berlin Marathon legs

• What I’m Reading: New Yorker re: Sobriety (extremely mixed thoughts on this), Beautiful World, Where Are You? (last ⅓ is chef’s kiss), Crying in H Mart 

• What I’m Celebrating: Lindsay MacMillan’s first book is now available for pre-order at Books Are Magic!

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welcome!

If ever you find yourself called to quit your big corporate job, cut off your hair, get rid of your things (sin a medium-sized Away suitcase), proclaim to everyone who will listen that THIS is your season of non-attachment, swear off dating and drinking, and move to Spain to revisit and rewrite the story of who you were 5 years ago when you were addicted to Adderall, alcohol, and an eating disorder... my friend, welcome. 

If you do not find yourself in precisely this predicament, good on you. I invite you along regardless. 

This is the largely truthful, hopelessly earnest retelling of true events. Unfortunately, I am an unreliable narrator. Fortunately, I am Midwestern, so I will do my darndest to tell the truth. 

To an outside spectator, someone perhaps like yourself, you may have bore witness via social media to the quitting job, the hair cut, the abroad move, the sobriety, etc. and said “Damn, that girl is going through something.” 

The fact of the matter is that I’m going through everything. 

While I said I was moving to Spain to live out my childhood dream (true), I had an ulterior motive. Which is really, I guess, primary. 

When I was here five years ago as a study abroad student, I was simply too hungry, drunk, and Adderalled out to taste, absorb, or see anything. I was the opposite of still. 

Now, I’m back. A sober vegan who goes to church. I could not be farther from the woman who worshipped booze, bars, and bodies trying to find God anywhere but in herself.

I’m looking for her though, this lost girl. I know she is within me still. I don’t hate her. I’m not ashamed of her anymore, nor afraid. I want to welcome her back home. To remind her that I love her and I’d never leave her again. 

I am done abandoning myself. 

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running in place - an essay

I’m frankly quite bad with consistency. You can see the graveyard of well-intentioned blog series that never got past the first post, half-done business plans, abandoned hobbies including knitting, doodling, and watercolors. I’m great with intensity, shit with rigor. 

Which is why I love a marathon.

For fear of the overdone marathon metaphor, if you simply do not care about marathons or find it overly blasé, please feel free to skip. 

I signed up for the New York marathon when I was still a senior in college, before I had ever ran a mile. (Again with the intensity vs rigor thing.) I knew I’d be able to pull it off. I am a grinder. I am not the first to finish, but with sheer brute force, I will get it done.

Note: That was about the same time I signed up to do a 110 hour silent meditation retreat after having meditated 15 minutes at yoga teacher training.

That first marathon was a big deal in our family. The high school lacrosse personality captain who cut corners on her laps was running 26 miles! It was my first fall in New York. I had just started a job at Goldman Sachs and was living in a Financial District apartment that was partitioned by a curtain. 

My parents and my little brother flew in from Michigan and Colorado to spectate. So did my long-distance boyfriend, making the haul from Arizona. It was his birthday, which was classic that I made the weekend about me. I tried to compensate by throwing him a surprise birthday party the night before the marathon. 

The marathon went as well as a first marathon could go. I was extremely supported. My parents, brother, and friends fanned out across the city and I saw a familiar face at nearly every mile marker. They had signs, flowers, pretzels. 

When I was struggling on that final uphill stretch in Central Park on mile 24, my brother threw down his backpack and jumped into the marathon with me. Running alongside me, he screamed, “You can fucking do this, Sarah!!!”

And I did. I actually ran across the finish line with the Spanish man who I met on the bus on the way to the startline that morning. This was his first marathon after beating testicular cancer. 

When our feet hit the end of race tracker, we embraced each other like family and both burst into tears. (Fun fact: I recently Whatsapped him to see if he wanted to get coffee while I am here in Barcelona!) 

I was so caught up in the miracle of running into my new Barcelonian friend .01 mile before the finish line, that I nearly missed my then-boyfriend standing there under the end gate. To this day I’m not entirely sure how he did this as I’ve found the NYC marathon to have higher security than any international airport I’ve been to.

He wrapped me in his arms, was the perfect Instagram boyfriend, and helped me walk out of Central Park. When I could no longer walk, he piggy backed me down 6th Avenue.

This is all to say, that first marathon, I was carried. I was supported. I was wrapped in so much love. And I was not alone. 

The second one, I joined a month before it happened.

I walked into work on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs and sat down at my desk. My very cool colleague loudly asked if I wanted a bib. At the time, my seat was completely surrounded by men at all sides.

I could feel them listening to my answer. I didn’t hesitate. 

“Yeah. I’ll do it.” 

I felt the ripple of respect as one of my colleagues shook me by the shoulder.

“Yeah that’s our girl Swooooodieeee!!”

Again, I knew I’d figure it out. It was a month after the aforementioned boyfriend had broken up with me and I needed a distraction. I pulled together that marathon, in both a combination of rage and fear. It was too short of a notice for my parents to come. I knew it was a race I’d have to run largely alone. 

I also happened to be interviewing for a new job and found out that I’d be presenting to the CEO of Goldman Sachs the day after the marathon. 

During the marathon, I practiced my speech. At the 22nd mile, my body started to talk to me. My legs cramped and I checked in the med tent. I was going to finish it, no matter what. 

The ex-boyfriend had texted me during the marathon which I thought was rather inconsiderate but further solidified that I was going to complete this race. I would have crawled to the finish line. 

I sprinted the last .2 miles with the city screaming at me. Go go go! 

Afterwards, I tried to find my friends. I could not find them and started to cry. I was so cold that a kind stranger duct taped a blanket to me. 

I got through that marathon, and that week, in what I truly believe was a miracle and a Herculean effort by my support system.

My four closest friends found me among the crush of people wrapped in that duct taped blanket and held me on the subway so I wouldn’t pass out and could get home to practice the speech I had to give the next day.

This weekend, I ran my third marathon, this time in Berlin. 

But I knew from the start that this was going to be different. It had to be.

Running in New York is comfortable, as comfortable as a marathon can be. You know probably 10-25 people also running it, because everyone who lives in New York is also Type A enough to run the damn thing. (See chart below).

You run on streets you’ve trained on. There’s great signage. You get on the subway and back to your bed after you’re done. 

I signed up for Berlin months ago when I was still in New York, because I felt it was a good idea. A marathon in Europe! So fun! I’d be so close in Barcelona, it should be no sweat. 

I didn’t think through all the logistics required. I’ve never been to Berlin. I don’t speak German. I’ve never ran a marathon without having friends or family there to spectate (or save) me if needed. I didn’t think about how I couldn’t just order the food I like pre-race here or that my head would hurt from speaking Spanish all day trying to get myself back to fluency again. 

I didn’t realize that running the marathon wouldn’t be the only marathon at play. 

I moved to Barcelona three weeks ago, not knowing one person. I knew I would figure it out when I got here. 

And so far, I have. I’ve made incredible friends (all from Spain!), found a yoga studio, a running group, a co-working space. I love my apartment. I love my mornings before the rest of my world wakes up. 

But there’s a lot I’m wading through.

Someone (won’t name names) once called me the highest performing, lowest functioning person she’s ever met and that always stuck with me. It has also stuck with every roommate and close friend who I’ve called in a pickle because I lost my keys/wallet/phone/journal and needed to be rescued. 

I’ve never lived alone, and that has been by design. I was afraid of how I might destroy myself when I was by myself. 

Not just by being locked out or trapping myself in an inescapable glass castle of dirty dishes, but because it was when I lived alone that I learned how to make myself skinny. The secret that nearly took my life. 

When I am alone, the thoughts about food and body and weight would get so loud. I liked living with other people because it was almost built-in child protection from myself. I couldn’t do the scary things with other people watching. 

This is the first time I’ve lived alone.

Since I was a junior in college, I’ve had the goal “be better by myself.” And I’ve tried. I did the 10-day silent meditation retreat as though it would fix my codependency in one fell swoop. 

But it never worked. Undesired in high school, when I got to college and men started to pay attention to me, I’ve never been alone again. I have constantly been getting into, out of, or in between relationships. 

The longest I’ve been single since I was a high schooler is… now. These past six months.  

So I’m now living alone. I’m now single.

I’m also back in the place where I nearly destroyed myself. 

For anyone who knew me in college, you may have been able to tell I had an eating disorder. If you weren’t, it’s because I hid it very well. 

When I was in Spain for my study abroad semester, I stopped eating completely. I’d take so much Adderall and drink so much coffee, I could go weeks without eating anything other than a cucumber. It got so bad that one of the people I was in Italy with on Spring Break reached out to my home friends to get my mom’s phone number to call her and say that they thought I might die. 

I still to this day do not know who that was. I owe them everything.  

But being here, I walk streets I have walked before. I go to places I have been to, in a past life.  The ghost of who I was greets me when I walk past a fruteria I had forgotten about, a bar I had ran home from, a cafe where I’d order 6 coffees a day and no food. 

I’m learning to eat again. The six months before moving to Spain, I’d “practice” ordering dessert at every meal, so that I could unlearn this belief that dessert and other fear foods were only something I deserved if I had exercised enough. 

I want to taste my life. 

I’m also sober. Coming up on six months on October 17th. I’ll write about it more in the future, but in short, it has been the most transformative, grueling, revealing, and liberating decision I’ve ever made for myself. 

My therapist said an AA-ism is “No big changes in the year” when you go sober. 

I have simply not followed that advice. I don’t think there is another big change I could make. New job, new life, new language, new haircut, new friends, new diet. It’s actually laughable. 

But, this is all to say, that this marathon was going to be very different than a New York Marathon. The conditions are different and I am different.

When I ran in New York, I was using running as a way to escape my life. I originally started running because I was so anxious at work that I needed an outlet. That running 14 miles on a Saturday was more pleasant than being left alone with my thoughts. 

Here, I’ve come to slow down. I run now, not because I hate my body, but because I love my body so much I couldn’t not run. Running feels good. Running makes me feel connected to my body. I can’t hate my body when I run. It’s too extraordinary. 

My friend Sean gave me this advice for that first marathon.

 “Run your race.” 

It has become a prayer this past year as I have stepped off the treadmill and am no longer living in accordance with what I think is impressive or esteemed by other people. 

I’ve been so lucky recently, to find people who are running their own race, one that runs parallel to mine. 

People who, like me, were doing the big jobs and chasing the shiny things and found it became unmanageable and uninspiring. People who similarly traded their big loud life for one that is filled with art, that is slow, that is whole and holy and wholly their own. 

I pray that I can run my race. I pray that I can keep one foot after another, even though I don’t know the course, even though all the people around me might be running faster or with different training.

Because only I know my body, only I know what I need. I pray that I can clear through the noise and drop into the silence to the internal compass that always points me in the right direction. 

At the end of the day, it's just me and me out there. 

There's no Central Park rescue. There's no sign screaming that I'm on the right path. The only person who is going to carry me home is myself.  

The day of the marathon, it was a gorgeous day in Berlin. I ran with two friends of friends I met 12 hours before at dinner. We took the train to the startline together and when the race started, we quickly dropped into our own races. 

I ran knowing that I wasn’t looking for anyone in the crowd. The only person spectating was myself. 

“It’s just you and you.” I said to myself. 

You and you. 

It always was and always will be your race. 

P.S.

For any person who is curious, I did finish the Berlin marathon. I’ll spare you the split by split analysis, but I ran the fastest half marathon I’ve ever run and then completely wrecked my body on the back half. It was incredibly hot and I just got too dehydrated. 

But it was exactly the race I needed to run. 

I was humbled, but I was happy. The race very quickly changed from “finish under 4 hours” to “finish without destroying your body” and I took it into stride. I did the trot, stop, rub out cramp, check into med tent, hobble, run, walk for a grueling twelve miles. 

Sometimes the race you’re running isn’t the race you thought you’d run, but it’s yours to finish all the same. 

You will. You and you. 

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for your viewing pleasure: a story in 3 parts