Personal Essay: Pounding the Pavement

Over the course of my almost 33 years on earth, I've spent a lot of time pounding the pavement in rubber-soled shoes. 

These days, my pavement-pounding takes place during my daily walks with my baby and insane little dog {whose energy necessitates these long daily walks} but for quite a few years of my life, my pavement-pounding came in the form of running. 

No, I didn't run cross country or track, and no, I never ran a marathon or even trained for one...instead, my running was motivated by fear, anxiety, and often, straight self-loathing.

On a recent walk in my neighborhood, as I listened to the sound of my shoes smacking the pavement, underneath my baby's babbling and my dogs loud panting, I started thinking about another distinct memory of hearing my shoes hit the pavement, this one from my college years: 

After a fitful night of drunken sleep, I woke up around 6am. I had no idea what time I had gone to bed and the events of the previous night were hazy, but I woke up at my super-casual, not-really-boyfriend's place, so assumed that the night had ended on an okay note. 

I crawled out of his bed and found my bag stowed away in the corner of his messy room. Inside I located an empty solo cup, a neon bendy straw (of course), my phone, college ID, and luckily, some running clothes + sneakers. I may have been drunk the night before, but in my alcohol-induced stupor I'd still had the wherewithal to pack some shorts and shoes. That's how obsessed I had become.

I laced up my running shoes on the front stoop and headed out towards one of my favorite trails heading away from campus. I definitely still had too much alcohol in my system to be running and I felt sick and famished at the same time, but I kept going because working out was my addiction and I needed it. The sound of my shoes hitting the pavement was my prayer to the god of overwhelmed, perfectionistic college girls everywhere, a chance at redemption for my indulgences the night before. 

I don't know how far I ran that morning--I doubt it was long given how sick and shaky I felt--but I clearly remember getting back to this guy's place after my run to find him sitting outside, looking bewildered at the fact that I had been exercising already. I think at that point we both knew I had a problem, but we just laughed about how much I loved running and how no hangover could stop me from getting out there and pounding the pavement first thing in the morning.

When I think back on this moment now, I get really sad for that girl. Don't get me wrong--she was having a blast and absolutely LOVED college (truly, I loved it SO much!), but underneath it all, she also kind of hated herself. 

This version of me had struggled with an eating disorder and related exercise addiction in high school, and although she had gone through treatment for it and gotten a whole lot better, she then went to college. There, during her freshman year, she did way more eating and drinking than ever before (status quo), gained the freshman 15 (yep, so cliche) and had the typical college student alcohol bloat (you know, where everything is just puffy even if you aren't necessarily "overweight")...and so, over the summer between freshman and sophomore year, she had tip-toed back into her eating issues and jumped into her accompanying exercise addiction with a vengeance.  

The thing about being a compulsive exerciser is that you can always play it off as a "healthy" addiction. We all know that exercising is good for us, so how could it be wrong? And for most, it's not. But for some, it becomes a disorder of it's own, the exercise a means to an end, the drive to exercise coming from a dark, sad place. Yes, I loved running (or had grown to love it because of what it did for me), but I loved the idea of being thin even more, and that's why I did it every day. 

There were other girls on campus who I knew had similar issues, girls who I would see in the gym and on the paved trail in the local park. I could easily identify the members of my tribe; we would pass each other on the way to and from the dorms or the gym in the early morning hours, despite still smelling like the vodka we drank the night before, circles underneath our eyes.

We didn't let ourselves sleep in very often because we had too much to do, felt too frazzled, and had to get in a workout and run, too! I felt connected to these girls even though I didn't really know them, but I also felt sorry for them because I understood their inner turmoil. 

Fast forward many years later, and I eventually ran myself to the ground. My constant exercising and relentless pounding of the pavement (with my "heavy stride") led to a stress fracture in my pelvis, a bulging disc, sciatica, and constant pain. 

But this is the injury that caused me to seek out medical help, where I was finally told to stop running. This is the injury that led to the appointment where I was told that the only thing I could do from now on was swim or do yoga, the appointment that started me down the path to falling in love with yoga and beginning to heal my relationship with my body. This was also the beginning of the journey that I am still on today, the one where I began to love my body and treat it with respect as a yogi and moderate, healthy exerciser.

Every once in a while, I come across a student in one of my classes who I can tell has the same over-exerciser tendencies that I did. I saw it more frequently in my classes in DC, where there were many Type-A 20-somethings who reminded me so much of myself right out of college, but I see it here on the Cape, too, in students of all ages, sizes, and backgrounds. And when I do, I feel so much all at once; I know how they feel, I want to help them, I want them to heal, but I also know that they have to find their own way, just like I did (and am still doing). 

I can't run anymore and I haven't run more than a mile or two in at least 7 or 8 years. Running doesn't feel good in my body these days and despite my desire to be able to pound the pavement again (just every once in a while!), I think it's probably for the best that my body has shut off my ability to access this form of exercise. It's like my body knows that it isn't good for me and so it has put on the brakes, limiting me to a slower, more forgiving pace.

Every time that I feel that old urge to take off, to go run away from my feelings, ​I am so thankful for the wisdom of my body and I am so glad that it has forgiven me for all of those years of pounding it into the ground.