Running has made me address some issues from my past. My motivation to run is multi-layered, of course, but here's one dirty little fold that flapped out at me this past week.
As background, I want a fancy running watch. I've looked at the cheap ones, and the medium priced ones, and only an expensive one will do; and they're mad expensive, like $375 for a piece of plastic with GPS. I'm a "watch" person. I value gears and craftsmanship. It's very hard for me to get my head around spending more than $20 on anything plastic, even if it could lift me up and fly me to the finish line at the marathon.
Since I don't want to outlay cash for said plastic timepiece, I decided to fund raise by selling off some of the label-whore trash I have lying around my apartment. Most of it comes from a time in my life when I was less self-realized, or when I was engaged to "J" who liked to decorate me as if a trophy. Every business trip he took without me, every gambling expedition with the guys, yielded some new trinket.
When we split, I returned the flawless diamond engagement ring, and over 80 engagement and wedding gifts from family and friends. I wanted to do the right thing and give us both a chance to move on and get it right; but I'm also hyper sentimental so I kept all the small meaningful gifts, wrapped them up carefully, and put them in boxes at my mother's house. I also kept the shoes and handbags he'd given me because, well, they were used, and what was he going to do with them? Give them to his sister? He told me later he wished I'd done more shopping in our relationship, bought more, spent more. You can see how that would be a bit of a problem for someone like me who is happiest in flip flops and a sundress.
I won't get into how sad and drawn out the collapse of the union was. I started it, terrified I was the only one who saw there might be a problem; and then he finished it, shortly after he started running again.
J had been a runner in H.S. and, having grown up attending private school in the city, felt like the streets of NYC were his second home. We'd been going to the gym in the morning, and playing tennis twice a week, but J started to go out running instead in the afternoon. I didn't have any interest in joining him. He made me go a few times on the weekend around the Reservoir but it was a hot mess. He'd get frustrated that I wasn't fast, and I'd throw up somewhere along the way. Eventually, he stopped asking me to come and I was relieved.
J's runs started taking longer and longer. He'd walk in the door a few hours after leaving and I'd say in my most condescending voice, "Where were you!? Do you know how long you've been gone?" He'd silently look away. J wasn't much of a talker. I started to suspect he wasn't off running, but rather visiting a friend, or breaking confidence in some other way. It had already been established at that point that he wasn't trustworthy. I even hated the way he looked in his mugger-style grey running cap and lavender fleece; they began to represent my two biggest fears about him.
When I met J, he'd been a workout fiend. His arms and chest were so big he had to wear custom shirts. I was never into big muscles, so this was lost on me. After we got engaged, we both gained at least 10 lbs; everybody kept taking us out to celebrate; we drank expensive wine and ate a lot of cheese. We worked out to try to mitigate the conditions, but it was a struggle.
Then one fall day J started running again and it seemed to begin to restore his self-confidence. The sit-up bench came out of storage and landed in the middle of our bedroom. There were dumbbells on the dining room table. We were becoming like lonely strangers sharing an intensely enmeshed life; and I began to feel like J's long runs were the other woman.
When I took up running last fall, I wasn't consciously thinking about tracking that "other woman" down and smashing her proverbial head in, but I did find a form of catharsis, and compassion for J, along the way. I hadn't been expecting that, and I hadn't realized how much I still had bottled up inside me. "Men who run" had been a very threatening combination to me. I categorically avoided them until I felt like I couldn't any more. Turns out, I still like men who run, just not that one in particular I gave it a shot with a number of years ago.
So, last weekend I bravely pulled out a few meaningless gifts from J that I thought I was ready to part with, choosing MY life as a runner, my need for a watch, over vapid physical representations of a love that was never fully realized. I put the brown Ferragamo bag up for auction first. I hated everything that bag stood for: a gambling trip to Aruba gone wrong. When the first bid came in on eBay, a wave of deep sadness came over me... and then joy! An era over... new things to propel me forward! I have translated a gift that was intended to make me happy but didn't, into something that really will make me happy, and represents my own liberation from a short-sighted view of myself.
J's running was "the other woman" in a lot of ways; but not in a bad way, if that makes sense; I needed that other woman to help me help him see the truth of our situation. Anyway, I'm shipping the bag off to some lady in Canada tomorrow and I can only hope that the Universe keeps bringing me people who teach me about myself, and care about me, and support my journey forward.
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