I rolled up to the Brooklyn Half with cried-out eyes puffed to the size of inflated queen-sized air mattresses. I’d been dumped by my long-term boyfriend over the phone a few hours before start time, and was feeling less than social. I saw some NP faces around, but I mostly kept my head down. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to cry: so I ran the race, got on the subway, went home and went to sleep at noon.
But summer brought new friends and new goals, and things were great. Except for a weird knee twinge, but like most painful things, I chose to ignore it until I couldn’t anymore. It turned out to be a little more than that though: a stress reaction that my doctor said would likely break if I were to run the Chicago marathon in 10 days. So crutches it was. Of course I was bummed, I’d been working all summer and was so focused on making this “my race,” even hoping to get under 3:40. But I didn’t want to complain. I knew it could be worse, and that I was lucky: I hadn’t actually broken anything, and if all went well I could still run New York.
Then three days later, my grandma died. I felt stuck: I couldn’t run it out, like I normally would. I wasn’t even allowed to walk. My coworker likened me to “Kanye when his jaw was wired shut,” and that felt pretty on point. But at a time when everything felt upside down, I knew there was one place that would always feel normal. So I woke up the next morning and hobbled the longest 0.7 miles of my life to the base of the Williamsburg bridge, and joined a neon huddle of friends with hugs to spare. Because this time, I didn’t want to cry: I wanted to talk.
For so long, I only dealt with problems on the inside. I wouldn’t ask for help or say “hey, I’m hurting,” it’d just be me and my stuffed pig crying to sleep over Lana del Rey covers of Leonard Cohen. But after this obnoxious snowball of events, I realized something. It is so, SO okay to reach out. To let friends jump in to pull you through a meaningful race, to hug it out and shed tears even if it’s not yet 7 a.m., to let them carry your groceries and bring you snacks and clean your mess after you spill a smoothie inside your bag (twice). I was on two crutches, but I really had three, and that tight web of friendship was the one holding me up the most.
One of the last things I told my grandma was how I was training to run these races for her. She had been battling Alzheimer’s for a long time, and I was raising money on her behalf. She fought to the end, and so would I. But the days leading up to the marathon were filled with the most doubt I’d ever felt about anything. Ever. I ran the 3.5 mile PR course a few days earlier, and while I was so glad to be back on my feet after 5 weeks, it was beyond hard and I realized just how off the path I’d fallen. Like, “Why do people enjoy this” hard. “How do my lungs work” hard. I was trying to keep my chin up, but gravity seemed to have other plans.
Morning of, I was scrolling through Facebook and was inspired by Erica’s post about her race mantra to create my own. “Don’t break your leg” didn’t feel super uplifting, so I decided on “do something hard today, Ab,” because in talking to myself it’s exclusively monosyllabic nicknames such as Ab, Champ, and Skip. And I actually used it during the race. Because of COURSE things got hard. All I’d done for the past 5 weeks was sit around eating ice cream in the hopes it would mend my bone. Looking back after I finished, I truly couldn’t believe I had done it. But now, thinking back, I realize there’s not a chance in hell I wouldn’t have: I had an army of green poncho-ed pals at Mile 10, friends to run with me, family and teammates cheering me on, and my grandma’s fight written in my bones.
The biggest way you can help yourself is to ask for it. And don’t ignore painful things. If you don’t pay them the right attention, everything can shatter. Everyone goes through breakups. Everyone gets injured. Everyone’s grandma dies. But not everyone is handed a worldwide group of friends and support—for that, you have to just show up. And I’m so glad I did.
Now, to thank you from reading, here’s a picture from my very first race. It was one mile and I thought I would never survive. But I did! The other good news is that I still have these glasses, so if anyone ever needs spare frames, hit a girl up.
