The only constant is change

If I had to come up with a theme for this story, it would be change.  This is the story of how I changed my life, and how it continues to change.  It’s such a funny idea.  Change is everywhere and is happening all the time.  It is all around us, occurring at a million different rates.  If there is one thing in life that is constant and reliable, it is change.  But when change happens, our emotions escalate.  We become ecstatic, overcome, heartbroken, amazed, devastated.  Change is never easy and it is never simple, but it is always there.

I am a different person today than I was yesterday, and I will be a different person tomorrow too.  Every moment I am changing and learning something new about myself and the world around me.  Someone once told me that all of the cells in our body regenerate themselves every 7 years.  I don’t know if this is true, but I like the idea.  Every 7 years, you are a completely different you.  But the change happens so slowly, so minutely, that you don’t notice it until all of sudden you’re different.  I didn’t wake up one day, snap my fingers, and become a runner.  It was a slow, long change that took place over time.  And one day I looked back on things and thought to myself, “When did I become a runner?”

Since I moved to Seattle, I have changed in many ways.  I’m happier, more outgoing, more comfortable in uncomfortable situations.  The person that left New York City in August of 2008 is not the same person I am today.  Much of that person is still inside me, but there are bits and pieces that have changed a great deal.  And it is those bits and pieces that have made all the difference. 

When Lucy and I packed up and left New York, I rented a U-Haul trailer and attached it to a trailer hitch I had installed on my car just for that purpose.  My mom, a woman who loves doing puzzles, came to help me pack up and puzzled all of my life into that tiny trailer.  We managed to fit a couch, a mattress, a desk, a table, and a ton of boxes in it.  I don’t think there was an inch of room to spare.  Then we drove my little Honda Civic across New York State back to my parents, crossing our fingers that the engine didn’t overheat in the August sun while struggling to pull like the Little Engine That Could.

Leaving NYC was harder than I thought it would be.  New York City is the city of dreams.  People who have never been there imagine that it is this place where miracles happen and the world is different.  This is somewhat true, but obviously an idealized version of the city.  However, I had become accustomed to being a New Yorker.  I liked watching movies or TV shows like Law and Order and being able to pick out exactly where certain shots were filmed.  I loved picking apart impossible settings—an actor coming out of a subway station in Chelsea and suddenly finding herself on the Upper East Side by 5^th Ave.  I got a kick out of it.  I felt special living in New York.

It was those little things that were hard to say goodbye to.  I loved the nuances and hidden pieces of beauty you could find throughout the city.  Subway doors look like this:  

Once, I was riding the L train out of Brooklyn into Manhattan and noticed that one of the lower black stickers that reads “Do not lean on door” had been very perfectly replaced by an identical sticker that read “Do not fall in love.”  Unless you were looking closely and actually reading the words that nobody bothers to read, you would never have noticed it.  In New York City, you have to look at the details to find the poetry in the world.

This year for my holiday trip back to the East Coast, I decided to fly into NYC and spend a few days reminiscing about the life I once led.  It was the first time I had stepped foot in the city since I said goodbye to it 3 ½ years ago.  I’m not sure what I expected from this visit.  But I wanted to go…I wanted to feel and see and touch the change I had experienced over the past few years.  Only by going back to the beginning, to the root of the story, do you really see all the changes that have manifested themselves on the journey.

I think I wanted it all to be different.  I wanted to go back to Brooklyn, to visit the places I’d spent my “entering real life” years and have it all be different.  As if by me leaving, this entire city would redirect its course.  But a lot was the same.  The dog park was still there, and even though it had new benches and new dogs, it was still the same.  I visited a few old apartment buildings.  I’m sure their insides were filled with new souls floating through life, but their shells had not changed.  My favorite neighborhood bagel store, with its unobtrusively subtle name still stood with its ever-changing, often politically-inspired murals.

New dogs enjoying the same old dog park.

The converted burlap factory where me and 2 roommates built the walls of the empty loft we rented.  Someone else in now enjoying the fruits of our labor.

My first NYC apartment, looking more dilapidated than ever.  The Thai restaurant underneath still going strong.

Best bagels ever--huge and gooey and overloaded with cream cheese.

            I think I also wanted it all to be the same.  I wanted to go back to the city, visit the old haunts, and feel that time had stopped moving after I left.  But a lot was very different.  The Williamsburg waterfront has been consumed by large condos and even a boardwalk.  A little city of convenience stores has built up around these condos, along a street that used to be filled with dilapidated, empty factories.  They’ve even started relining many streets throughout the city to include bike lanes.  This was unheard of a few years ago.

2 off these were in the process of being built when I moved, the rest weren't there.  The boardwalk didn't exist...to get to the water, you had to sneak through the fence of an old factory.

This road used to be deserted.  Even the sidewalk is new.

            The result of my walk down memory lane, through this living, breathing organism of a city was somewhat anticlimactic.  I expected to feel different, to be touched by some unnamable feeling.  But in the end, it all felt normal.  I fell right back into that weird borderline state of feeling at home in a city that one can never feel at home in.  On my last night there, as I was leaving dinner with my dad and brother, I commented that I felt as though I could be walking back to the subway, hopping on a train to go back to my apartment.  As if I didn’t live on a completely different coast now, in a completely different life.  As if nothing had changed.  It was deceiving and disconcerting that my body and mind could fall so easily back into old habits.  I guess you just can’t leave 6 years of life behind you so easily.

            Since leaving NYC with my mom at my side, Lucy cramped in the back seat, and my little Honda loaded down by the weight of my life, things have changed.  I am glad for the changes that have happened, but I am oddly comforted by the feeling that some things haven’t changed.  Somewhere inside me, there is a place where NYC will always live.  If I had known that 3 ½ years ago, I would have hated the idea.  But I like it now.  Even though life is constantly changing, somewhere in your soul is a place where all the old things reside.  All the old feelings, places, people, disappointments, hopes, and dreams are still there.  You just have to remember to go back and find them every now and then.

I heart running

            I love to run.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that I love the act of running.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I do.  But there are certainly days when I feel like crap.  Just 3 miles can be torturous, and the thought of even toughing it up one hill is too much to handle.  Running is a challenge. 

But there’s obviously something about running that makes it great.  There wouldn’t be so many people out there running if there wasn’t something about this thing that keeps us going.  I’ve mentioned before the battle of a race, the amazing feeling of fighting through the negative thoughts and finishing.  But I don’t run a race every day.  In fact, in the 3 years that I’ve been running, I’ve only completed 5 major (half or full marathon distance) races.  There are so many other reasons why I love to run. 

There are moments during a long run where time stops moving.  You hit that runner’s high and you feel like you could just keep going forever.  The miles float away under your feet and the world seems to come to a standstill because you are running, and that’s the only thing that is happening right now.  All you feel is the rhythm of your feet hitting the earth over and over.  Your body is so in tune with itself that the running seems effortless.  Breathing is rhythmic, your heart beats strongly in your chest…you may as well be sitting on your couch because things just seem that easy.

You may have heard the phrase “running is cheaper than therapy,” or perhaps you’ve seen it on a bumper sticker.  As cheesy as it sounds, it is completely true.  Running is how I release my stress and tension.  I often have difficulty turning my brain off after teaching.  Only running can truly flip the switch.  On days I come home and head straight for the couch, I can’t seem to relax.  My back is tense, my hands clench slightly, and I can’t take my mind off the events of day.  When I run, everything releases.  Physically and mentally.  The tension of the day disappears and stressful thoughts are extinguished—only to be rekindled with the blaring of my morning alarm.  But for those few evening hours after a run, I can focus on making a good meal, writing a blog, reading a book, watching some Hulu, or enjoying time with friends.

I love to run because of this:

Because just one second ago she was snoring, deep in puppy dreams.  She managed to open her eyes just that far after the surprising flash of the first picture, then 30 seconds later they had slowly closed and the snoring had recommenced.

I also love running because it is my time.  I have made the choice to run.  I can run wherever I want, however far I’d like to go, and for however long I chose to.  For my first year of running, it was a solo act.  Just me and Lucy tackling the streets and trails as best we could.  With my headphones in my ears, I am in my own bubble, my own world, and all I have to think about is me.  I often run with friends now, but this is still my time.  I choose to share my time with friends who choose to share their time with me.  I still enjoy my solo runs with Lucy, but I find I need them less than I used to and often prefer company during a run.  Regardless of who I am with (or without), running is the one part of my life where I am selfishly doing something just for me.  And I am totally OK with that.

I love to run because I love to eat.  I love food.  All kinds of food—I’m not very picky (minus a few certain meats).  Running allows me to eat.  A lot.  Which makes both me and my tummy very happy.  After a Saturday morning long run, I feel no pangs of guilt devouring a huge plate of Eggs Florentine piled high with hollandaise sauce next to a mound of oily hash browns doused in ketchup and hot sauce.  The night before a run, I have no qualms about shoveling a gigantic bowl of pasta down my throat then sopping up the leftover sauce with an extra piece of bread.  Food is good, and running lets me enjoy it guilt-free.

The list of reasons why I love to run is endless—I haven’t even mentioned the health benefits, or the impact running has had on my social life.  But there is one reason why I love running that far surpasses the others.  I’ve mentioned before that I love to feel comfortable.  I like my routine.  And I often get myself stuck in my routines.  When things aren’t always going well for me, I turn to my routines for comfort.  I begin to go through the motions of my day so that I can turn my brain off completely.  I can go into auto-pilot, no thought or decision-making required.

When get stuck in a comfortable rut like this, I don’t feel things.  For many reasons throughout my life, I’ve become very practiced at letting things roll off my shoulders.  This is often beneficial.  In social situations, I describe it as being “laid back” and “easy going.”  When I’m teaching, I call it “patience.”  But at other times, I’ve gotten so good at letting things not “bother” me that often I think I’ve let it go too far.  It doesn’t bother me, because it doesn’t affect me.  I don’t feel the emotion.  I’m numb.  But when I run…I feel.  I feel my feet hit the sidewalk.  I feel my lungs struggle for air.  I feel my muscles strain as I push up a hill.  I feel tired.  I feel exhilarated.  I feel.

The more often I run, the harder I push myself, the higher the hill, the more I feel.  And to feel is to live.  After all, when you boil things down, what more are we than our feelings and emotions?  These things shape the choices we make, the way we live our lives, the people we become.  Without feeling, what are we but a mass of flesh and bones?  So at the end of things, I love to run because I love to feel.  And I love to feel because I love to live. 

Need to distract yourself? Run!

            I’ve been feeling really uneasy lately and haven’t been able to figure out why.  My bills are paid, no one’s mad at me, I don’t have any projects outstanding that need completion or commitments being neglected.  This uneasy feeling has been bothering me for over a week, and today I think I finally figured it out.

            It’s the waiting.  I hate waiting.  For anything.  For everything.  I hate waiting in line.  I hate waiting for people who are late.  I hate waiting for races to start when you’re ready to run.  I especially hate waiting after I make big decisions, or for that matter even little ones.  I want to follow through immediately.   I don’t want to wait to make the change.  I recently decided to upgrade my near-windowless apartment to something sunnier and perhaps larger.  Now I’m in this uneasy waiting time.  With the holidays coming up, I can’t make a move right away and I also have to play this awkward time balance game of trying to find a place and giving my landlord one month’s notice at the opportune moment.  I’ve found a few apartments that seem to have great potential, but I’m waiting to get an appointment to see them.  I think my recent uneasiness stems from this waiting.  I want to find an apartment, make the move, and be relaxing in my new sunny apartment right now (well…the sunny part has to wait until the sun chooses to grace Seattle with its presence—until then I’ll settle for a view of the rain).

            When I was a lifeguard during high school and college, there was a part of the certification process that requires you to tread water for one minute.  Being a swimmer, this part of the test was never difficult for me.  I could easily tread water for way longer than that.  But I hated performing this requirement.  When you tread water, you expend energy to do the simple task of staying in the same spot.  You kick your legs and wave your arms for the mere purpose of not going anywhere.  When I put forth energy, I want to go somewhere, do something, be productive.  To me, waiting feels like treading water.  All this mental energy, uneasiness, annoyance, and even anger results in merely getting you to the same place you already are.  It’s incredibly frustrating.

            When I got back to NYC from my trip to Seattle with Sierra, I was stuck in a 4 month waiting period.  This was difficult to say the least.  I wanted to get started with my new life in my new city.  But I had to wait.  I still had 2 ½ months of school left with my first graders, and then I had to spend 6 weeks student teaching in a self-contained special ed summer school class to finish up my masters degree (yes, I had to student teach again after 2 years of teaching already).

I miss these ladies.

             I had to figure out a way to distract myself from this waiting.  So I spent a lot of time with my friends, who I would soon miss dearly.  Lucy and I spent a lot of time reading in the park, taking advantage of the good weather.  I also tried to take full advantage of the last few months I had in New York City and rekindle my love for it—I didn't want to leave with a bad taste in my mouth.

Lucy is very good at relaxing in the park.

                   I also ran.  A lot.  As soon as I got back from Seattle, I was back on the streets and back at the cemetery.  I started out slow, but it was easier for me to slide back into things than I had thought.  I had to re-convince Lucy that running did not mean beeping, which took a week or so.  After she was comfortable again, it was hard to hold myself back.  About 2-3 weeks after my trip, I did something that a few months previous I never would have thought imaginable.  I ran a mile.  I had been slowly increasing my running time and decreasing my walking time each day.  I was up to five minutes running and 30 seconds walking when one day I decided that I would stop walking.  And we know I don’t like waiting, so once I made the decision, I did it.

            I ran around the entire cemetery.  Without stopping.  It felt incredible.  And once I achieved that goal, once I felt that feeling of accomplishment, I didn’t want to stop.  The next day, I did it again.  And again.  The next week, I added a few blocks.  I went further than just the cemetery.  And the week after that, I went even further.  Week by week, I added more and more distance.  It got to the point that I had to strategically plan my runs so that I wouldn’t run too far into a not-so-good part of the city.  I’d do loops and weird zigzags to avoid the borders of sketchy neighborhoods.  And if I stumbled a little too far, at least I had Lucy there with me.

The determinedness that running brought to my life was something new for me.  I was a pretty good swimmer growing up.  From age 5 until the end of high school, swimming is what I did.  In elementary school, I was on multiple teams.  I’d practice before school, after school, in the summer.  It was a huge part of my life.  But I never felt determined about swimming.  I remember at swim meets, sometimes I’d swim a race and I’d win it, but I’d get out of the water and my coach and my mother would look at me baffled.  “You’re supposed to be tired when you finish a race,” they’d say.  “You’re supposed to be out of breath!”  I didn’t get it…I won the race.  Wasn’t that enough?  I had no idea what if felt like to really push myself.

During this 4 month waiting period, I pushed myself harder than I ever had before.  Every day I wanted to go farther.  I wanted to be able to come home and say “Today I ran more than I ever have before.”  I felt amazing.  I lost another 10 lbs in those 4 months, so by the time I made it to Seattle I had trimmed off a total of 20 lbs.  I felt healthy, productive, and attractive for the first time in a long time.

All this running helped my awful waiting time go faster.  I had something else to think about.  Every day I had a new goal to conquer, a new reason to feel good about myself.  The running seemed to be helping Lucy too.  She was tired when we got home, the same kind of tired she used to be after running herself ragged at the dog park.  By the time I was ready to pack up my car and wave goodbye to NYC for good, Lucy and I were running about 4 miles a day.  I had somehow managed to make my waiting productive.  I may have physically been in the same place those 4 months, but in my mind and in my body I was most certainly not treading water.  I was going somewhere.

If you don't have an HLM, I feel bad for you

            Good friends are hard to find.  It’s a phrase we’ve all heard before, but it rings true.  Everyone has friends.  Lots of people even have close friends.  But not everyone has that one truly good friend that has always been there for you and will always be there for you.  No questions asked.  You don’t have to predict the future or guess, you know this friend will be there.  A term has arisen of late to describe this kind of friend: HLM, or Hetero Life Mate.  I think this term perfectly describes this kind of friend.

            Having an HLM is a lot like what I’d imagine a strong marriage to be.  An HLM is someone who truly and deeply knows you.  They know your strengths and weakness and have been there with you for your triumphs and pitfalls.  Sometimes your friendship is amazingly strong and great, and sometimes things aren’t so good.  But no matter what, life goes on and this person remains an integral part of it.  And, most importantly I believe, an HLM has been there through all the changes.  In life, things change.  People change.  Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse…but what’s great about an HLM is that they’ve seen you change.  They’ve watched you change.  They’ve let you change.  They probably even helped you change.  And they’re still here on the other side of things.  And you’ve done the same for them.  And probably will again in the future.  An HLM is the rock that steadies you, the hand that pushes you forward, and the body block that stops you from going too far.

            I can’t imagine what my life would have become without my HLM.  Sierra and I met when we were 14.  Innocent young high schoolers with our whole lives ahead of us.  We endured high school together, through its roller coaster of ups and downs.  Although we went to different colleges, we both wound up in NYC.  After my first semester of college when I realized I hated my school, I spent my weekends (remember in college when “weekends” were Thursday night through Sunday?) at her college, sleeping in her dorm room.  Did you know that two 5’10” girls could comfortably share a twin bed, as long as you slept head to toe?

            When Sierra moved out to Seattle, it was kind of like a separation.  We weren’t divorced, but we lived far away from each other and didn’t talk as often as we should have.  And when we did talk, I was usually on a slightly inebriated long walk on deserted NYC streets from the subway station to my apartment at 4 am—because fortunately it was only 1 am in Seattle and my HLM never left me alone on those streets when I needed her.

            So when I went out to visit Seattle in April 2008, 4 months before my planned move, it was like a reunion for Sierra and I.  We’d had 2 years of separation and we needed each other around again.  By this point in time, my injured Achilles tendon was feeling much better and I was itching to try running again.  I’d been pretty good about my portion controlling and had already lost about 10 lbs since the unfortunate hiking picture I showed you a few posts back.  After getting over my injury, I was doing my best to enjoy my last few months in the city that I loved and hated all at once.  I had a month of what was termed “March Madness” with my friends Lauren and Ashley, which consisted of getting out of our apartments, showing ourselves off, and boosting our energies.  With my new slightly slimmer figure, I felt amazing.  I was learning to separate my difficult and trying work day from my home life so that I could actually enjoy a real social life.  And I knew I had so much to look forward to.

 Life was good, and that April when Sierra played host to me in Seattle, she made pretty damn sure that I knew life could be even better.  Just when you feel like you are on top of the world, only an HLM can make you believe you haven’t even come close to seeing the top yet.  Here follows a photo montage of the week that made the next 4 months seem as though they couldn’t go by fast enough.

To start off the week, Sierra took me on my first walk around Greenlake.  She knew all about my new active lifestyle and wanted to show me just how active Seattle could be.  I basically live at this lake now and have run around it more times than I could even hope to quantify:

After that, we visited Chateau Ste Michelle because wine is awesome.  We even hopped over to Red Hook brewery for a meal after.  Because micro-brewed beer is awesome too:

We made friends with a peacock.  Who wouldn’t want to make friends with a peacock?:

We got dirty in the mud at Discovery Park.  This ended up being somewhat ironic, because the apartment we had together for my first 2 years here was in Magnolia, the same neighborhood:

We took lots of pictures of ourselves that look a lot like this one with different backgrounds:

We conquered a few hundred stairs coming up from the beach at Discovery and then stood in awkward poses of pride at the top:

We hung out at a few bars with people that would soon become very very good friends of mine.

We went to a Mariner’s game, which resulted in a night that looks like this in my memories.

And there was a high school sleep-over type dance party.  Because who wouldn’t want to end an amazing trip with an amazing friend with an amazing dance party?

Through all of life's inevitable changes, it's nice to know that there is someone who has been there for the last 14 years and will continue to be there for many more to come.  Thanks HLM, you're a lifesaver. Seriously.

Life on hold

            Injuries suck.  Once you’ve become addicted to running, which can happen fairly quickly, getting an injury seems to put life on hold.  All you want to do is get back out and run again, but you know that doing exactly that will result in a longer hold on life.  Since I started running, I’ve had my fair share of injuries—some as a result of running, others not so much (Seahawks tailgating + sneaky curb = sprained ankle…apparently).  Like everything else with running, being injured is a mental battle.  It puts you in a funk, makes you want to hide away and pretend running never really existed until you can get back out there.  When I experienced my first running injury, the epic life-changing tailspin I was in suddenly halted.

Somewhere between 2-3 weeks after I first started running, my body fought back for the first time.  It was just a run or two after I discovered the culprit behind Lucy’s refusal to run as I was trying to convince her that the beeping wouldn’t ever happen again.  She had begun hesitatingly running after the first few cycles of run/walk when she didn’t hear the beeping.  Things were going well: I had a plan for building my stamina, I had solved the defiant dog problem, and I had bought some running gear to make me feel like a real runner.  I was determined, I was ready, I wanted to be a runner.

            I was about ¾ of the way through a loop around the cemetery when the Achilles tendon on my left foot suddenly tightened up.  I thought it was one of the typical “aches and pains” of running that will momentarily appear and then disappear just as quickly.  But as I continued running, it got tighter and tighter until I had to stop running.  By the time I got back to my apartment, I was hobbling, unable to bend my foot more than a 90 degree angle. 

            I’d like to say when I got home that I iced my foot, but to be honest I have no idea.  It wouldn’t surprise me if I didn’t.  I didn’t know the value of ice then.  So to no surprise, I woke up the next morning and it was just as tight, if not worse.  I limped to work and tried to make it up and down the 4 flights of stairs at my school all day, kids laughing at me as I used the stair railing as a crutch.  By the end of the day it sunk in that this wasn’t going away.  The teachers I worked with looked at me like I was crazy and told me this whole running business was ridiculous.

            My foot continued to be stuck in that awful tight position for a week.  If I bent it too much, I got this bone-chilling feeling that the tendon would just snap.  Once it started loosening, I was afraid to jump right back into running.  All my online research told me that even though injuries might feel better, that doesn’t mean that are better (yes…I researched online instead of seeing an actual doctor…do not judge me).  So I decided to take a full 6 weeks off.  I was going to be visiting Seattle in mid-April to scope out my soon-to-be new home and decided I would start running again when I got back. 

            And so, life was put on hold.  I can honestly say that I have very little recollection of the things I did in that 6 week period.  It was as if my brain shut off.  I was just waiting to be able to jumpstart my new life again.  Lucy and running had done so much to change everything about me already, and now I had to ignore them both.  My roommate walked Lucy with Jackson for me for the first few weeks, because I couldn’t even do that.  I started watching my food intake during this time in an effort to start losing a few pounds even if I couldn’t run.  But it seemed pointless.  I wanted to run and I couldn’t. 

So, because life is on hold at this point in the story, I’ll put the story on hold too.  Instead, here are a few interesting facts about Lucy to brighten your day:

1)  She eats her own eye boogers.  Once, when she was a puppy, as I picked away a little chunk of black gook from the corner of her eye, she reach out and licked it right off my thumb.  After the initial feeling of gross shivers down my spine, my immediate second reaction was, “well, that’s convenient.”  No wasting tissues to throw the boogers away every time I have to clean them.

2)  She likes to smell my breath first thing in the morning when I wake up.  She puts her head up on the bed, sticks her nose about an inch in front of my mouth, and gently sniffs.  It seems intriguing to her, as if she’s asking “What happened in there?”

3)  She has been beaten up by a cat named Bob more times than I can count on 2 hands and 2 feet.

4)  When she sleeps, she curls up into the tightest, smallest ball one can imagine for a dog that size.  People who have never seen her sleep before look at her dog bed and ask me where the cat is.  I promise she fits in the bed, despite what you may think.

5)  She has eaten poop on more than one occasion. 

6)  When we’re running or walking together, every now and then she’ll reach up and poke me in the butt with her nose.  When I look down at her, she is smiling up at me as if saying “Remember me?  I’m still here!”  I have to reach down and let her lick my hand before she’ll resume normal leash position (although she doesn’t get to do this if she’s eaten poop).

7)  When I say she smiles at me, I mean this literally.  I can remember 2 times in the past few months alone where people have randomly stopped me on the street during a walk to tell me that my dog is smiling.  That she looks so happy.  This makes me feel good.

8)  She’s a talker.  She has lots of different barks and whines for many varied situations.  She can do the most pathetic whine when asking to come up on the couch or sleep on the bed.  She’s also got a whimper that is a little more forceful when her bowl of food is sitting up on the counter and I’ve forgotten to put it down for her.  There’s also the pleading whine and stare at the toy that’s rolled just a little too far under the couch.  Then there’s the panicked “HELLO!!! I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE YOU AGAIN!!” welcome whine, where the whine even gets this sort of trilling quality to it. 

9)  She also has a moan.  This occurs when she’s just settled into a comfy position and is ready to fall into the deepest of sleeps.  She takes in a slow breath and breathes out the deepest, longest, most despairing sounding moan I’ve ever heard.  It’s as if she’s letting out every trouble from her tough doggy day so she can rest in peace.  Sometimes I wish I could do that.  One deep breath and you exhale all your troubles away.  Injury or no, life on hold or not, for this moment everything is OK.

We WILL run

            When Lucy and I first started running, I thought that getting me going would be the biggest dilemma.  I had such a surprise in store.  After I had done all my online research and found several articles and websites willing to dish out advice for beginning runners, I went back out and tried again.  I began what amounted to a Couch to 5K program (although I had no idea that’s what it was or that the term even existed). 

            On my second run, I put on my Roo’s again and walked out the door to the cemetery with a well-developed plan in my head.  Just having a plan was a huge relief to me.  I’m a planner.  I like to know what’s happening next and when.  I like to have a general idea of how things are going to go at least a few days in advance.  On my first run, I had no plan and no way of knowing how things might turn out, which is probably why it failed.  My plan was a run/walk program.  I’d run for 30 seconds, walk for a minute and repeat this until I made it the full mile around the cemetery.  The eventual goal was to up the running time and reduce the walking time in increments, slowly but surely, until I didn’t need the walking anymore.

            The problem with this program was that I didn’t have a watch.  So on my second run, I took Lucy out and “counted” in my head 30 seconds, then 60 seconds and so forth.  As I got more tired after the first few cycles, I could tell that my 30 second counts seemed to be going at a quicker pace while my 60 second counts seemed to get slower and slower.  This was ridiculous.  Buy yourself a watch lady.

            The next day, I visited Paragon Sports in Union Square and bought a very small key-chain stopwatch.  I also went down to their shoe section and bought my very first pair of running shoes.  I was blown away by the whole process.  The employee put me on a treadmill, watched me run barefoot, “analyzed” my gate on a video screen, and then pointed to a wall of shoes.  I picked out the prettiest ones.  I had no idea what the difference between anything was, but I did as I was told.

            I was excited to get back out again.  My second run had been reasonably successful and I was ready to do it for real in my new fancy running shoes.  So on try number 3, I put my running shoes on (wow, what a difference from my worn out Roo’s!), put Lucy on her leash, and proceeded as normal.  5 minute walk to the cemetery.  Press start on the stopwatch and go!

            Wait no, don’t go.  Suddenly Lucy did not want to run.  She was pulling back on the leash, resisting forward movement.  So I beeped the watch to a stop.   I leaned down to give her some love and got her walking again.  So then I pressed start on the watch again to time my first 30 seconds and tried to take off.  I was jerked very roughly backwards.  I turned around to see Lucy behind me, 4 feet firmly planted on the ground, using all the muscles in her body to refuse to move.

            What in the world is going on?  How can I have this 70 lb dog, a lab/hound mix who could never get enough running in the dog park, suddenly decide she will refuse to run?  In the past I had learned that brute force often worked with her when need be (for example: there is a VERY good sniff on this tree that NEEDS to be sniffed and I am going to NOT MOVE until I am done sniffing—one yank on the leash with all my strength would defeat this apparently unstoppable need to sniff every tree).  Lucy is all muscle and very strong, but I could be strong and stubborn too.  I braced my body, grabbed the leash as if this was the most important game of tug-o-war in my life, and pulled.  This got her up and began forward movement, but as soon as I started my watch again to start going, she was crouched again, tail between the legs, looks of death and fear all mixed up in her eyes.

            I didn’t know what to do.  I was only half way down one side of the square-shaped cemetery and I had a plan.  Plans should always work out.  That’s what plans are for.  I kept repeating this action, yanking and pulling, starting and stopping, like a child who keeps repeating “no, no, no, no” over and over and expecting to not have to clean their room eventually.  Finally, Lucy’s stubbornness beat mine and I turned around and yanked her the whole way home.  I dropped her off at the door, shoved her in angrily, and turned around to go back to my plan. 

            When I’m frustrated, my runs often feel amazing.  I was so frustrated at this point that I took off and found it difficult to stick to my 30 second max running time.  But I wanted to be good, not push it, and not get injured like all the online articles said.  When I was done, I went home and glared at Lucy for the rest of the night, while she looked at me innocently, obviously unaware of anything she had done wrong.

            According to my articles, I should only run every other day until my body got stronger.  So the next day we walked and Lucy was just fine.  The day after that, I took treats with me.  When I started my timer and started running, she predictably planted her paws firmly.  I hooked the leash onto my elbow, leaned forward, and RAN, pulling her forward like a child drags a heavy wagon behind him.  I got to the end of the 30 seconds, stopped, and gave her a treat.  We repeated this 30 seconds running, treat, and 60 seconds walking around the entire mile loop.  I can only imagine the image of us running down the sidewalk: me needing to learn forward at a 45 degree angle to gather enough strength to drag my dog behind me as I ran.  I was surprisingly determined.  I was going to be a runner and so was my dog.  That was the whole point!  The next time I ran, I brought deli turkey instead of treats.  This kind of worked, but her reluctance to run was irritating and embarrassing. 

            It was after about 3 or 4 of these outrageous dragging sessions when I was sitting at home watching some TV.  Somehow, I must have turned on the alarm on my watch, which was sitting nearby.  It randomly started beeping.  Lucy, who had been curled cozily in her bed, jumped up, tail between her legs, ran into the farthest corner of the far away bathroom and started shaking.  OH. MY. GOD. The beeping!!  Lucy is extremely sound sensitive.  She has hound ears.  She hates loud noises and is even afraid of something about the sound that fans make.  The first time I turned on a fan on a hot summer day, she ran into a corner, peed, and shook uncontrollably for 20 minutes.

            I felt like an awful mother.  I beeped that stupid high-pitched timer every 30 to 60 seconds on our runs.  It was torture to her sensitive ears.  No wonder the refusal, the defiance.  She was trying to tell me something.  All that frustration, the dragging, the ridiculousness, the stupid BEEPING.  I should have known.

            So again, I turned to my laptop.  I went online and found the only timer I could find at a teacher-salary price that did not beep.  Unfortunately by the time it arrived in the mail, I had to stop running.  But that, my friends, is the next episode in this adventure…

We are runners, and we know we're crazy

            Yesterday was Sunday.  In Seattle, it was near 50 degrees and rainy with gusts of wind.  Typical fall Seattle weather.  Normal people, on a day like that, would try to sleep in a bit.  Then maybe do some errands, perhaps tidy up a bit.  Maybe it was even a good laundry day.  Some might take a day like that to catch up on some Hulu or watch a little Netflix.  Others might even read a book with a hot cup of tea.

            What did I do?  I woke up at 5 am in order to run the Amica Insurance Seattle Half Marathon with a few thousand other crazy runners.  I met my friends at 6 am to drive down to the start line at Seattle Center.  Then I met a few more friends at the start line at 7 am.  By 7:30, I was taking off from the starting line, ready to conquer the 13.1 miles ahead of me with one goal: break the 2 hour finish time that haunted me during my last half in June when I finished in 2 hours and 1 minute. 

            One minute.  It may not seem like a lot, but when you are in the midst of 13.1 hilly miles with the wind and rain, that one minute means running each mile 4.5 seconds faster than the last time I ran.  It means NOT walking that last grudging hill.  It means NOT slowing down when the legs start aching.  It means standing up tall, pushing forward, and remembering why I’m doing this.

            Wait...why am I doing this?  That question pesters me every time I race.  I hit the hard miles, want to slow down, want to stop.  Suddenly my mind becomes a battlefield.  The body is tired, but the body will do its job.  I know that.  I’ve pushed it beyond what I thought were its limits before, and it has not broken down on me.  It’s the mind that is unreliable.  In the middle of a tough race, I feel like I have two people in my head.  There’s Voice #1 who wants to stop, walk, give up, sit on the side of the road and say I’m done. It’s the voice that asks “Why on Earth am I doing this??"  It’s the voice that wants to send evil vibes to the spectator holding up the sign that says “No one is making you do this.”  The voice that wants to sucker punch the bystander at mile 10 or 20 who tells you excitedly “you’re almost there!”  As well intentioned as you may be, I am NOT almost there.

            And then there’s Voice #2.  The voice who says you can do this.  You WILL do this.  You will hate yourself if you don’t do this.  Pain is temporary.  You will make it through.  5 seconds faster a mile?  No problem.  That looming hill up ahead?  You will conquer it.  Yes, it will hurt.  But then the pain will stop and you will be stronger.  This is the voice that believes in all the motivational posters people hold up on the side of the road: “Pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit,” “Just one foot in front of the other,” “If you walk, you’ll still be hurting.”  It’s also the voice that laughs at the funny stuff like the poster that proudly declares “WORST PARADE EVER” or the group of people on the side of the road handing out water cups full of beer.  It’s the voice that enjoys the race, enjoys the day, enjoys life.

            Yesterday, the argument between these two voices started pretty early.  I hit the big hill at mile 7 and already Voice #1 was poking me in the back of the head.  But I’d run that hill in training 2 times before and I could run it now.  So I did.  After running somewhere around an 8:40 pace for the first 8 miles, mile 9 slowed me.  At mile 10, I wanted to stop.  I asked myself what possessed me to do this again?  In my head, I cycled through all the races I have planned for the next 7 months and Voice #1 told me I was insane.  And I walked.  Immediately Voice #2 crept back in.  As usual, she won the argument this time and I started running again.  I ran through mile 11 and mile 12 and finally saw the mile 13 marker.  On the last big hill—just a block long and less than a tenth of a mile from the finish line, Voice #1 convinced me I had given it all.  I started walking again.  Then as I was about halfway up the hill, the pacer holding up a big “2 hour” sign passed me and suddenly I had way more to give.  I started running.  I ran past the pacer, finished the hill, ran up around the corner, into the stadium at Seattle Center, and crossed the finished line at what had to be somewhere between a 7:45 and 8:15 pace.  I raised my hands, celebrated my finish, and looked down at my watch.  1 hour and 59 minutes (official time I found out later—1:59:33.  Less than half a minute was the difference between me and my goal). 

I did it.  I beat 2 hours.  And nothing can beat that feeling.  And it’s not even about the 2 hours.  It’s about doing it.  Whatever it is.  There’s nothing like giving your all, pushing your body and your mind to its limits and achieving the goal.  I’ve found nothing else on earth that can give me a rush like that.  And the funny thing is, as soon as I was done, before a volunteer even had the chance to take off my timing chip 10 feet from the finish line, the only thing I could think was I could have done better.  Next time I will do better.  I think this thought at the end of every race.  At the end of my first full marathon in June 2010, as I hobbled across the parking lot at Qwest Field, high on the amazing feeling of having just run a marathon, I was already thinking about how I could do better.  How I could have pushed my body further.  How I could have pushed Voice #1 further back in my head.

Running is an addiction.  The more you run and the better you do, the more you want to run and the better you want to do.  But running isn’t about being the fastest or running the farthest.  Running is about winning in your own mind.  It’s about learning to ignore the voice puts you down.  It’s about finding out how strong your soul is.  At mile 20 of a marathon or mile 10 of a half (or for that matter, mile 1 of a daily run), will your soul be strong enough to fight down that voice that tells you to stop?  That tells you that you are weak, you cannot do it?  Will your soul be strong enough to push yourself harder and farther than you ever have before?  And when you run, and you realize that your soul is strong enough…it’s a feeling that just can’t be described in words.   

Crazy, happy runners at the end of yesterday's race.

Hmmm...that's not comfortable

Several posts back, I wrote a list of 10 things I learned from Lucy.  In writing this blog and thinking more deeply about life back then, I realize that there is so much more I’ve learned from her.  Or, if at least not from her, then because of her.  One of the biggest differences between how I felt about life in New York and how I feel about life now is my attitude towards comfort.  Back then, all I wanted was comfort.  A safe, unencumbered life.

Comfort is a funny thing.  I love to feel comfortable.  I love my routine, my stability, my hole that I settle into.  But I’ve learned over time that to settle too deeply is dangerous.  It’s those times when I get too comfortable that I start to lose myself.  I get stuck in my routine, my repetition, and life suddenly starts being about what I should be doing next—according to my self-imposed schedule.  This urge to finish the schedule overtakes the desire to be happy.  Comfort takes precedence over satisfaction with life.  So now, I push myself.  When I find I’ve dug too deep into a pit of comfort, I decide to scratch at the walls.  I’ve realized that in order to stay awake and alive, I need to be uncomfortable every now and then.  I need to try something new or do something different.  I need to feel a flutter in my chest, a slight pull saying “maybe I shouldn’t do this, I’d rather be at home.” When I feel that flutter, I know I’m alive again…awake instead of sleeping in cushiony comfort. 

The first time I pushed myself in this way, was when I decided to move to Seattle.  And then I decided to start running.  So today, I present for you an episode of discomfort:

            Early February 2008 in Queens.  I throw on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie.  I even find an old sports bra after digging through my drawers, struggling to remember if I own one.  I put on an old pair of ‘Roos (remember those?) with the soles so worn down and falling apart that they flap as I lift my feet off the ground.  I put Lucy on her leash and step out the door.  I walk for about 5 minutes to the corner of a cemetery nearby my apartment.  I had driven around it the other day—one mile around exactly.  And I start running.

            10 seconds later, I stop running.  Holy crap.  Running is hard.  Can’t breathe.  I walk about a block and a half and try again.  This time I make it 20 seconds.  My lungs are on fire.  Lucy looks at me like I’m crazy.  She jumps at me, seeming to say “Are we running or not?”  I ask myself, what was I thinking?  But I try again, wanting to do this.  Run for 2 minutes straight.  I feel like I just chain-smoked 2 packs of cigarettes, but I haven’t smoked in 2 and a half years.  Wow…how do people do this?  Walk for 3 minutes.  Run for 30 seconds.  Walk for 5 minutes.  Run for 30 seconds.  Must…get…oxygen…in.  Try again.  20 seconds.  I can’t do this.  Turn around and walk home.  Lucy looks at me curiously.  “That’s it?” she says.

            I silently apologize and walk in the door.  I shower, feeling horrible.  Then I sit at my laptop.  And I start reading everything there is to read about running.  Because this will work for me.  This is going to work.

How to change your life

            Sometimes you can watch your life change right before your eyes.  There are many reasons why this happens, and oftentimes this event occurs hand in hand with tragedies.  But in the winter of ‘07-’08, I watched my life change after I made the decision the change it. 

I always knew I would leave New York City.  I could never imagine myself raising a family there or living the rest of my life there.  Towards the end of college, it was not just “knowing” I would leave, but really I wanted to leave.  New York and I always had a love/hate relationship.  I loved New York.  I loved living there and experiencing everything New York had to offer.  I loved the experiences it gave me, the lessons it taught me, and the secret beauty it held hidden in its nooks and crannies.  New York is a beautiful, amazing, fascinating place.  It’s mind boggling to think about how the city functions, how closely everything is tied together, and how little you can know about it.

But I hated it too.  I hated how fast everything moved, and how little time there was to get things done.  I think there is some sort of bend in time and space centered on NYC which makes the days shorter.  There are literally less hours in the day there.  I also hated how lonely I felt there.  In the most compactly crowded city in the US, people don’t interact with each other.  They don’t smile at you on the street or say hello.  They think you’re weird if you even make eye contact.  There’s all these people living parallel lives who never allow their paths to cross…never take a leap and interact.   

The dog park was different.  We were caged there together every day, forced to interact and socialize.  I think once I got a taste of the possibilities of a life where people acknowledge one another, I didn’t want to lose it.  But then I did.  And I was just another body in the ant hill that is New York City.  Go to work, come home, walk the dog (or go to class), go to bed.  Do your job.  Make your money.  Repeat.  I didn’t want to do it anymore.  I knew that the day I finished my Master’s program, I wanted out.  Not just for me, but for Lucy too.  She needed to be in a place where she could feel dirt under her feet sometimes.

During my college years, I spent a great deal of my time with my best friend from high school, who was also going to college in NYC.  Freshman year, when I decided I didn’t like my school, I spent weekends in her dorm room, making friends with her college friends.  After my first Brooklyn apartment, Sierra and I decided to get an apartment together.  We rented a tiny 2 bedroom railroad style apartment.  A year and a half later, Sierra decided to move to Seattle.  And she left.  Almost every time I talked to her, she would mention what a great city Seattle was and how much I would love it if I lived there.  I’d laugh it off, the thought of moving across the country inconceivable to me.  I couldn’t be that far from my family.  I couldn’t make that big of a change.  But after 2 years of persistent whispering in my ear, Sierra had planted a seed.

My last winter in NYC, I spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen next.  Do I go back to Rochester, a city that had very little to offer me besides my family?  I had visited Seattle by that point and had indeed loved it.  Was it really possible to move there?  All these questions floated around in my head.  What would I do with my furniture?  How could I afford a move like that?  What would I do when I got there?  How would I get a job?  What would my parents think? 

I went home for Christmas vacation with these thoughts floating around in my head.  I packed Lucy up in the car and drove the 5 ½ hours home to my parents, not seriously thinking I would ever make a move like that.  But it was a nagging thought.  During vacations at home, I had started taking long walks with my dad.  My parents had 2 golden retrievers at the time that my dad would walk regularly.  When I'd come home with Lucy, we’d take Sadie, Abbey, and Lucy out tromping through the snow to get their exercise.  It was on one of these walks that I mentioned Seattle to my dad.  I was simply talking through my thoughts about my next steps in life, and my miscellaneous thoughts about this city across the country.  I jokingly mentioned how hard Sierra had been working to convince me to move out there.  And my dad listened.  I remember very distinctly a point in the conversation when my dad looked at me and simply said “It sounds like you’ve already made the decision.  Now you just need to do it.”  He pointed out that furniture is just things.  Sell it, buy new stuff later.  He told me I’d find a job.  He told me that he wanted me to be happy, and if being happy meant being across the country, that he was ok with that.  He’d rather me be happy and far away than close by and sad.

As soon as he said that to me, it was like life moved into a different gear.  From that moment on, I watched it change.  I watched me change.  My dad was right.  I had made the decision.  I just hadn’t realized it.  And I needed my mom and dad to be ok with it, to tell me I should do it.  It felt like my heart started beating that day.  Like I had been living on auto-pilot for so long and now I was alive again, making my own choices.  I would move to Seattle for me.  And for Lucy.

This new-found feeling of life and living also played a large role in my taking the leap to start running.  I went back to New York after New Year’s and was ready to change my life.  I didn’t want to just change my location.  I wanted to change me.  When I looked in the mirror, I wasn’t happy with what I saw and I wanted to change that.  I think that may be why running first occurred to me.  Not only would I have a quicker way to run down Lucy’s energy, but I would also be making myself a better person.

Months later, just before leaving for Seattle, my good friend Lauren (who photographed all my apartments as a going away present) told me I was different.  She said that ever since I made the decision to leave New York for Seattle, my whole demeanor changed.  I was motivated, I was happier.  And she was right.  I had changed.  I had watched myself change.  But I wasn’t done yet.  I had so much more ahead of me.

Guilt-driven movement worked for me

            I did not want to run today.  I had a long, tiring day.  I could feel the beginnings of a headache.  I kept nodding off in the passenger seat of my carpool ride on the highway.  And I was cold.  Winter has hit Seattle, and although temperatures may not ever get as extreme as they did in New York, the cold here is different.  It seeps into your bones and stays there.  My classroom is freezing and by the time I get in the car at the end of the day, I’m so cold I blast the heat the whole 40 minute drive home.  But the cold stays inside me, and the moment I turn the heat off I’m shivering again.  So the thought of putting on not-so-warm running clothes and plunging into the cold was not pleasant.  I also found out that I’ll be able to fit more runs in this week than I thought, so I didn’t necessarily need to run today.  I had every reason not to run. 

But then I got home, opened my door, and was greeted immediately by a bundle of energy and excitement.  I couldn’t look into those golden eyes and tell her, “Sorry, no exercise today…I just don’t feel like it.”  The guilt when I see Lucy weighs on me on these types of days.  Knowing that she has slept all day and most likely spent the last hour waiting by the door, I just can’t face the guilt of not taking her out for a run.  So I sucked it up, put on my running clothes, dove out into the cold, and went for a 5 mile run.  And it felt great.  It was just what I needed to turn my day around.

When I moved out to Queens at the beginning of my second year of teaching, I had every reason to want to crawl into a hole and stay there.  I was on the outskirts of a city that I didn’t even want to be a part of anyways.  My college friends had all jumped ship for better things long ago.  I was slowly losing touch my dog park friends—apparently when you leave the dog park, you just aren’t a part of it anymore.  I had 2 steadfast friends who I saw on occasion, but not frequently enough.  In addition to this, I can’t describe my 1^st grade class that year as anything less than hellish.  I had students screaming, throwing things, destroying my classroom, treating each other like a piece of garbage on the sidewalk.  And I had NO support from my administration.  Teaching that year is what I now call “teaching boot-camp.”  I knew there was something better out there, and my only consolation was the thought that if I could teach through this, I could teach anywhere.

I could have curled up into a ball, drowning in the depression I felt slowly creeping up on me, but on this sentimental journey through time, we are at the point where something inside me shifted.  It may have been gradual, or it may have been a sudden movement, but at this instant in time, I wanted something different.  I wanted something different for me, and something better for Lucy.  I had spent 5 years holed up in the giant gray walls of New York City and was suddenly missing all things green.  I wanted to get out of the city.  I wanted to breathe clean air.  It depressed me to watch my students, who typically had not ever left the 2-block vicinity of their home.  They had all of NYC at their hands for a $2 subway ride, but they had never seen it.  Most of their parents had never seen it either.  They had grown up on those same 2 blocks.  And these children would most likely repeat this pattern.  Although it was not so extreme, to an extent I felt like them.  I was trapped in the confines of one of the largest cities in the US and I wanted out. 

            I attribute this shift in large part to Lucy.  Lucifer had caused a pretty abrupt departure from the dog park, but that didn’t mean that Lucy’s abundance of energy had subsided.  I was still constantly chasing her around the apartment trying to save every spare sock and pair of underwear.  Every day I came home to the same bundle of energy I came home to today, although the energy seemed more concentrated and ready to explode back then.  We started with long walks.  Since Emily and I got home around the same time, we’d take Jackson and Lucy together for hour to 2 hour long walks after work.  We explored our new neighborhood, trying hard not to turn the wrong corner or walk too far into a part of the city we shouldn’t be. 

Pre-running days = me 20 lbs heavier than today

These long walks were invigorating, but they weren’t enough.  I wanted to get out of the city…be somewhere different.  So then we started with hiking.  Emily, who grew up with a very active runner/hiker for a father, was just as anxious as me to escape our concrete jail.  By this time, I had bought a car, as it was easier to maneuver around Queens with one and parking was free and easy.  We took full advantage of this luxury.  That fall we took several hour to 2 hour long drives outside of the city up into the beauty of Upstate NY.  Our mini pack of me, Lucy, Emily, and Jackson let our feet hit rock that actually belonged there.  For once, I could climb up above everything and see for miles and miles beyond the mere square of space I was standing on (without paying an exorbitant amount of money to be elevated to the top of the Empire State Building).  It was a freedom I hadn’t felt in a long time.  The air made me feel alive again. 

Lucy loving it, and Jackson trying to :)

And Lucy…Lucy was in her element on these hikes.  For the entirety of her short life, she’d been scratching her nails on the concrete sidewalks that are New York City.  Now she could dig them into the dirt.  She learned exactly how far her 27 ft flexi-leash could go, and would dash ahead until just before the point where the leash would stop and yank her roughly backwards.  She was a mountain goat, scaling rocks.  She was a fish in the water and would swim endlessly in any stream or lake we encountered.  She would actually dive into the water, trying to catch whatever floated below.  I’d never seen a dog stick her whole head underwater like that, blowing bubbles through her nose.  And I’d never seen the Hound in her come out so strongly.  She smelled everything.  When we took out and back trails, she would know every turn on the way back home, sniffing each bend, pointing us in the right direction.  I’d never seen her so on top of the world.  This kind of energy was different from her dog park running in circles.  She belonged in this wilderness.  Jackson chased along behind her, trying his best to keep up.

A dog where she belongs...

As great as these hikes and long walks were, time and weather became an issue.  When fall turned into winter, hiking couldn’t happen anymore.  And when winter temperatures hit well below freezing, it became a time consuming process bundling up in multiple pairs of pants, many layers of shirts, and the thickest gloves, scarves, and hats I could find.  I felt like a penguin walking down the street sometimes.  And of course, the cold only gave Lucy more energy that needed to be burned off.  Sometimes I would come home late from work and let lack of time and energy win out over guilt.  I couldn’t help thinking that there must be a quicker way to get rid of this puppy energy, instead of 90 minute walks.  I had even stopped cooking, because walking took precedence over every spare moment I had.

            And then one day, as the world was slowly defrosting from that ridiculously cold winter, it occurred to me.  Running.  Wouldn’t running expel the same amount of energy in a much shorter amount of time?  I don’t know how the idea sprang into my head.  I didn’t know any runners.  I had never been a runner myself.  I had no idea how to even start running.  But suddenly, I wanted to run.

Home is where the dog is

When I was in college, a year or 2 before I got Lucy, the movie Garden State was released.  I loved this movie for so many reasons, but mostly because I really connected with Zach Braff’s character.  A lot of the things he said resonated with me and I felt as though he was able to articulate much of what I was feeling at the time, but couldn’t quite put into words.  One particular line stuck with me:

“You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone...you'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know.”  

           

            I didn’t know I was feeling that feeling until Zach Braff said it, but as soon as I heard it, things clicked in my mind.  This fictional person on this screen had just articulated for me why I was feeling a certain loss, missing something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  I visited my family a lot during this time (they were a cheap 45 minute Jet Blue flight or a 5.5 hour car ride away), but whenever I went home something was missing there too.  It didn’t feel quite right.  And here, on this movie screen, it suddenly made sense.  I was going through that transition in life—my parents’ home was no longer my own.  Of course I still felt at home when I was there, but I didn’t live there anymore.  I didn’t even have a room there.  I had become a guest in my parents’ house.  And I didn’t know where my home was.

            “Home” has always been a difficult concept for me.  We moved around quite a bit when I was younger.  I was born in Kentucky and lived on a tiny farm there until I was 4.  Then we moved to Richmond, Virginia where I became a swimmer, spending every moment of every summer at the pool.  In many ways, I have more memories of that pool than I do of our Virginia home.  When I was 12 we moved up to my parents house in Rochester, NY where they still live.  I remember when I went to college, the first time someone asked me where I was from, I didn’t know what to say.  Do I tell them all the places I’m from, or just the most relevant?  And what’s the most relevant?  Rochester was where I went to most of middle school and high school, so if I consider everything after puberty being life, then that’s where I’m from.  But I lived in Richmond the longest—8 years there, only 6 in Rochester.  I eventually settled on telling people I’m from Western New York, which is the go-to answer for me still.  If it becomes important later, I fill them in on the rest.  All this moving around really seemed to confuse the idea of home for me.

            During the dog park days, I think Lucy had begun to feel a little too at home in the park.  She had many friends who were there at the same time as us every day and they had begun to form a little pack.  Lucy is very alpha-female and I think that she felt she was in charge.  If there was a dog that approached her pack that she did not like, Lucifer emerged telling them to go away.  After this happened a few times, I started to get a bit nervous taking her to the park.  I even started taking long walks with her before going to the park in an attempt to help her not be so wired there.  But things started to look less hopeful after a while.

            In our last few months there, Lucy and I had befriended a German Shepherd named Jackson and his mom Emily.  Emily and I got along really well and were both in some really “uncomfortable” living situations.   Despite the work that had gone into the loft I was living in, the situation with my roommates had become somewhat awkward, to state it lightly.  For reasons that don’t need to be elaborated upon here (because they have nothing to do with dogs or running), Lucy and I needed a new home, and so did Emily and Jackson.  We spent a few grueling weeks trying to convince landlords to allow 2 large dogs into an apartment and finally settled on a place in Queens.  It was hard for me to make this move, despite the fact that I had found a great roommate and Lucy had too—Lucy and Jackson developed a kind of brother/sister relationship where they bossed each other around, played, and then cuddled when they were done.  When we had to stop going to the dog park, Lucy still had Jackson and as I began to lose touch with all my dog park friends, at least Emily was still there.

            During my 6 years in NYC, I was very much a transient.  I spent a year in the dorms at school, then moved in with a friend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  I then cycled through that and 2 other apartments in Williamsburg in the next 4 years.  Williamsburg had come to feel a little like a home, even if I didn’t have a consistent apartment there.  I knew the neighborhood inside and out.  After I got Lucy, I felt I had learned even more about it from our long and winding walks.  The best way to get to know a neighborhood is on foot with a dog.  When we moved out to Queens, I felt as though I was being removed from everything familiar.  I loved our apartment, which was larger and cheaper than any I’d had in NYC, but I was losing my home again.  I started to wonder, am I someone who is ever going to be able to stay put?  Will I ever feel settled?  Am I ever going to have a “home?”

            After making the final NYC move to Queens, I decided a year later to move out to Seattle, the details of which will be discussed in the future.  A very good friend of mine went around and took pictures of all my apartments in the city and framed them as a going away present.  It hangs in a very central location in my apartment today.  

I’m now on my second apartment in Seattle now and every time I look at those New York apartments, I remember that lost feeling I used to have.  It’s good to remember that feeling because it was so all-encompassing to me for so long, but I don’t really feel it anymore.  I’ve come to the belief that home has nothing to do with where I live.  Right now, Lucy is what makes me feel like I have a home.  She was with me in NYC watching me struggle through my first 2 years of teaching.  She was with me in those last 2 apartments.  Then she moved with me to Seattle and settled in with me at our first apartment here.  She watched me adjust to life on the other coast, making friends, growing into my own skin.  She became a runner with me.  She is with me now in my 2^nd apartment in 3 years here in Seattle.  She has watched me survive my ups and downs.  She has watched me change, and she has been with me through all those changes.  She has been with me through every moment of the last 5 years of my life, and I can’t say that about anybody else.  I think “home” means that you are in a place where you feel loved, supported, and comfortable.  As cheesy as it sounds, right now Lucy is my home.  Hopefully one day my home will include more than just a dog—a family of my own making would be an incredible home.  But until that happens, I have Lucy. 

One of my students last year gave me a very nice bookmark as an end of the year thank-you present.  On the bookmark is a quote by Josh Billings: “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”  Nothing could be more true.