Sometimes, as well as my usual dishing out of cheerleading and writerly encouragement, I find I’m in need of some encouragement myself. Most often this arrives as the need to pour out my words and observations into something of a creative non-fiction essay.
Thank you for indulging me today. If you have your own story to share, or encouragment to dish, I’ll gladly catch up with you in the ‘comments’.
My feet hit the pavement confidently, in an astonishingly calculated fashion. As if I was made to move this quickly, when only ten weeks ago my lungs and legs felt as if they belonged to someone else. My stride is sure, my pace steady. Rush hour traffic has already moved through and home to driveways and garages. Inside yellow-lit rooms I see television screens broadcasting sports games and quiz shows and dour news headlines. I glimpse figures slouched in surrender on sofas, scrolling phones or eating a tray-based evening meal. From one, sounds of a couple, arguing. In another a baby supported, soaring, in the aeroplane-like hands of a cooing adult. Above my moving form the moon gliding high, bright, waxing to full. The sky, twilight blending to blackness, drifting unpaintable tones of indigo, lilac, magenta. Crisp air slaking my nostrils, my throat, the insides of my chest. A faint rising sweat of both effort and accomplishment, a wetness at my collarbones, dribbling to the hollow between my breasts. My favourite Italian rock band1 pounding in my ears, the most faithful accompaniment to every run I’ve ever taken, screaming in unfairness and angst, beating a loyal metronome for my pain. Shins complaining, right knee niggling, arms cramping held in their necessary ninety degree angle. But I am happy and I am free and I am running.
This time, I’m doing it. Yes, I have expensive new shock-absorbing trainers. Yes, over ten weeks I’ve built my running schedule gradually, sensibly, just as I would coach my own fitness clients. Yes, I’m fuelling my body well, measuring my carbohydrates, balancing my protein, tracking my menstrual cycle, pushing on the weeks my body peaks, allowing rest during its ebbs.
But the real difference?
Running in the dark.
Like many girls who grew up in early 1990s small town England, dusty thirty year memories still plague me. Of bulky sanitary pads wedged into lurex knicker shorts, whistles blowing, the sweaty stench of the tumbling mats and leathery stink of the pommel horse. Inflated ego teen boys jeering, insensitive teachers in too-tight tracksuits quipping about me being “too big a build”, “too heavy-footed”, “too shy”, “too quiet”. Endless tears. Weekly sick notes.
But you’re a personal trainer now, my inner critic says. You should be super fit. You should be good at running. You should be a natural. I know, I answer. I’ve failed, I sob. I must. try. harder.
And so, I keep trying.
The road bends to the left and carries me onto a long, exposing straight. A twelve inch weedy grass verge divides me, my pride and my anxiety, from two-way sporadic traffic. Headlights occasionally blare. I imagine hunched drivers with maniacal grins and greedy eyes poring over my moving form, licking their lips and cackling at my snail-like speed. That they could catch up with me with ease, like the hapless female at the opening credits of a horror movie, flailing through a hazardous wood at black of night, hair whipping, cries uttering, eyes streaming, glancing back with fearful madness as she stumbles and…well, we all know how that story ends.
But tonight the traffic continues to move past me. No one stops. No one looks. Of course, no one is even mildly interested. Everyone is locked in their own cocoon of their own thoughts, their own complicated human lives. I am just another runner.
Something about my running efforts taking place under the relenting cover of darkness has brought about a change. It has helped me keep my breathing deftly under control. It has brought trust; trust that I know just where to step , surefooted even when lost to sight, lost to nightfall. It has relieved the embarassment of my always too-red face, extreme effort making itself glowingly known through the blood vessels and capillaries of my cheeks, my throat, my chest. I have been able to give it one hundred percent without fear of what people think, forgiven simply because they can’t see me. It has taken the comforting cloak of invisibility, to do this. The sheer anonymity of dusk.
I have the permission and allowing that I have always needed. To go at my own pace, without rushing to keep up with anyone else. Now, there’s a lesson.
However there’s a polarity; that of this desperate urge to succeed and therefore inevitably ‘be seen’, against a primal desire to be hidden, safe, quiet, small. I realise as I continue to strike the ground rhythmically that there is a polarity too in the bright, fluorescent clothing that it has been necessary to wear for these night runs. Here I am, my luminous zip-up lycra top says. Look at me, my striped leggings utter. But, underneath, I am cringing, eyes tight, begging that traffic to just. keep. moving.
So, as in our writing, as in our creativity, as in our living of this human life, this contradiction, this juxtaposition, exists. This wish to be seen, to take to the stage for the throwing of the flowers, the deafening applause, the glittering smiles, the heat of the spotlight. And then, conversely, this deep-down longing to retreat, to remain in our cave, within the hermitage of our writing lair, without judgement. Without ‘success’ either, yes, but without risk of blushing failure.
But we can each build our own confidence in our writing, and in the way we live, just as I have built my confidence to run. We can write and live ‘in the dark’, privately spilling, privately viewing, for our eyes only. Or we can practice out in the untethered open, wildly spinning and unspooling our deliciously colourful threads in public, learning as we go, feeding off the rise and fall of our friends, of our families, of our readers.
Which will you choose?
As I stride out for my last mile (which has grown to often be my fastest, there’s a message there too about self-doubt, I’m sure) an older runner, with all the telltale ‘experienced runner’ kit, is heading towards me on this narrow, puddle-swept path. The ultimate test. To be recognised by a fellow will simply complete the joy of this ten week journey from non-runner to someone who runs. He is smiling before I can even see his face clearly, the rain starting to beat now, speckling my freckles, my eyelashes, moistening my thirsty lips. He makes a simple gesture, hard as it is for runners to speak mid-effort, and with a such a short window for a human exchange. His right thumb angles up, that global symbol of acknowledgement, his head nods kindly in my direction, and he continues his metric pace without a second glance.
That’s it then. I’m in.
And I realise that we can find others cheering us on in the least likely of places. Like there, on that splashy pavement. Like here, on Substack. And that encouragement is priceless. A gentle thumbs up. A subtle nod of appreciation. Every share, every comment, every piece that resonates being recognised as such. We carry on typing, noting, creating, making. We carry on running. And maybe, one day, as that first imminent sign of spring, as that tentative March butterfly, we emerge. Into the light. Strong of root. Steady of mind. Crowded of colour. Sumptuous of texture. In all our true glory.
x Luisa
Of course I'm talking about the bright, young Italian things, Maneskin. Here's one of my favourite tracks:
Ah, this is just lovely. I love the idea of us all keeping our own pace but always moving forward, nodding at each other with a thumbs up each time we pass. Onward!
Balancing this duality.
Thanks @Luisa Skinner
I don't run in the dark, but I run.
I have put my art out there in many ways for many years.
I have been told I changed lives doing that.
Right now I'm retreating. I've stopped all my ‘out there’ activities and make art just for me, run at a much slower pace, live life in slow motion.
And it's good.
Sometimes the need to be on that stage manifests, the craving of applause sneaks in, the hope for flowers of appreciation peeks it's head around my barricade.
But as Miley Cyrus so truthfully sings: I can buy myself flowers.
And so I do.