The police came to our house. They handcuffed my mom. They dragged her screaming and kicking into an ambulance. I’m pretty sure it was an ambulance. There were paramedics on the scene, too. It’s all a little hazy. One thing I remember is the look of utter pity one of the officers gave me, sitting on the porch, watching it all go down. Here’s the thing about all that:
We asked them to do it.
In fact, we begged them. We called and called. She was talking about space aliens and the CIA (again). She was waking us up in the middle of the night. She was throwing things at us. She was threatening us with sharp objects.
Then, she promised to kill me.
I wasn’t her daughter.
I was a clone.
That was life, starting sometime around my fourteenth birthday. Things never got better, not really. We would reach this moment over and over. My mom wouldn’t stay on her meds. Each time, she got more violent.
My dad worked all the time. He often didn’t leave until 7 or 8 pm. He wasn’t there to protect me. My mom usually left my brother alone.
Instead, she came after me.
After school, I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t be in the house, not for very long, not until my dad got there and became the focal point of her rage. My dad and I could usually keep her in check. Alone, we were vulnerable.
So, what did I do with all this time?
One afternoon, I wandered toward the football field and just started walking around the track. It was between seasons. There was nobody to bother me or ask me what was wrong. There were no cars to run over me, no catcallers to make me uncomfortable. It wasn’t long before I started packing some shorts and gym shoes and running laps. Something about running calmed me down. Something about it made me feel steady. It gave me a sense of control.
Later, I would learn the name for this.
It was the runner’s high.
The longer I ran, the better it felt. The weeks went by, and I started looking up extra things to do to fill up more of the time. Stretches. Exercises. Sprints. Magazines like Runner’s World offered entire workout plans. Then I started timing myself, seeing how fast I could run one lap without keeling over.
So, instead of going home to endure abuse from my paranoid schizophrenic mom, I went to the track. I ran. I worked out. I did my homework in the bleachers. I read. Then I went home, feeling stronger. Even if my dad wasn’t there quite yet, I noticed something. My mom started leaving me alone.
I was no longer her victim.
One day, a couple of the popular kids saw me running laps. They came up and started talking to me. They had no idea this was where I was spending my afternoons. They didn’t ask why, and I didn’t tell them.
They didn’t need to know.
They said I should join the cross-country team. So I did. Then I also joined the track team. I got faster and faster, stronger and stronger. The coach was a serious runner. He had us running sprints uphill. He had us in the weight room. He had us doing weird dances across the basketball court. The school even offered a strength and conditioning class, and I signed up.
I made varsity.
Until then, I was regarded as weird. Nothing about me changed. Everyone just saw the other side of me, the quiet girl who liked to run, and they accepted it. They never accepted all of me, but they accepted that part.
Toward the end, I got injured.
It didn’t stop me.
My senior year, I spent most of the spring on an exercise bike. I came back and ran the last race of the season. I didn’t meet my goal. My coach asked me, “Was that your personal best?” I said, “Yeah, but…” He stopped me. He said, “You came back from an injury and set a PR. Be proud of that.”
He was right.
In college, running became rock climbing. It became writing books. It became earning a PhD. It became teaching. It became tenure. It became whatever I needed it to be. Later in life, I circled back to running and started competing in half-marathons. I ran in the Rockies. I ran on the plains. I ran on the beach. I ran everywhere. I’m not a morning person, but running gave me the reason to wake up at dawn and move through snow and ice, well below freezing.
When I was running, I wasn’t wallowing in my problems. I was thinking about running. I was thinking about the air in my lungs and the blood in my chest. I was thinking about the sky and the trees. I was thinking about the wind and the sun. When I was done, no matter how bad I felt, it gave me a sense of accomplishment. No matter what, I had run five miles. Ten miles. Twelve miles. On the worst days, my run was the thing that kept me together.
Every now and then, a friend would learn about what was going on in my life and ask me, “Why don’t you just run away?”
I was already running, just not away from my problems. I wish I’d been clever enough to say that to them at the time.
Instead, I just shrugged.
My mom never got better. She only got worse. Finally, she died alone in the only care facility in the state that took patients like her. Imagine all the things you get from a mom. I got none of them. All the things you learn from a mom, all the warmth and love you’re supposed to receive, some of us never get any of it. We have to make our way in the world with that. How?
How do you keep going when it’s that bad?
I’ve gone back over those years for the answers, and it was simple. One day, I just started running. Maybe if I’d been able to afford nicer racing shoes, maybe if I’d had a more stable home, I would’ve done even better. Maybe I would’ve qualified for a college team or even gone to the Olympics. But I didn’t need to do any of that for running to save my life, and running saved my life.
It wasn’t just running.
It was something else, a drive forward, a drive forward despite everything else in your life that wasn’t going the way you wanted, a drive forward despite everything else that wasn’t in your control. Running was just how I found it.
I don’t run anymore, but I’ve still got the drive.
Yesterday, someone reminded me.
Honestly, I have no idea whether or not you’re going to be okay. I have no idea if I’m going to be okay. I know that in the hardest moments of my life, I chose to focus on doing something, to keep going forward.
Doing something is better than doing nothing. Not everyone has the ability to do something. If you have the ability, use it.
You could put it like this: If I went home, my mom would beat me. She would scream at me. She would terrorize me.
So I found somewhere else to be, somewhere safe.
It wasn’t just an escape. It was a way forward.
It was a drive.
There’s countless souls out there who want to know how you can keep going when everything feels hopeless and beyond your control. We have plenty of answers. Here’s one of them: Find something that brings you peace. Find something you enjoy doing. Find something that matters. It doesn’t have to be running. It could be sewing. It could be art. It could be photography. It could be singing.
It could be anything.
Just do it.
Yesterday, I thought I was going to scrap this publication.
I guess not.
it's interesting, reflecting on the things that saved us & allowed us to survive & (sometimes!) thrive. in my case, it was informally adopting other families, at least 7 of 'em over time, so i'd have a place to be during holidays (not homeless) & a place to go when things were bad. i don't think i've ever had the drive or talent in any one particular area that you have - running, writing, phD. for me it was more about learning that we're not trapped where we are; we always have the power to create a sense of home elsewhere. these days, it's not so much anything i *do* (running, art, singing) that brings me a sense of peace. it's more just being where i *am*.
Thank you for your words and vulnerability in sharing this. So much of this resonates for me, for different reasons and in complicated ways that I’ll likely write about some time. But suffice it to say, I hope you don’t scrap this and keep writing whatever you need to say. As a storytelling teacher once told me, if you have a story to tell, someone is waiting to hear it.