I Need a Band-Aid.

There are days when the thought of what used to be is just a dull ache. I miss it, but I've adapted. Not because I want to, but because I need to. I have to adapt to survive, to not go crazy, to find a measure of peace and happiness in a life currently without running.

But there are things called triggers… stabbing little reminders that wake you up like cold water thrown in your face. It will be one of the five senses: touch, smell, hearing, sight, taste. The feel of your favorite tech shirt between your fingers. The sharp, clean smell of lake-shore air from your favorite running route. A song on your treadmill speedwork playlist. Driving past a random running stranger; they're wearing Asics, you notice. A sip of Gatorade. Those triggers sweep away weeks and months of dulled memories and forced acceptance. They rip the Band-Aid of resignation off the wound and you start bleeding again.

I was cleaning in that corner… and as I moved the printer back to its position, I brushed back against it. The clanking, clinking sound jarred in my head. 

Trigger.

 That, right there...  The sound I heard every time I hung up a medal. When I stood here in exultation, triumph, exhaustion, and saw the piece of plastic, metal, and fabric fall to its place among the rest. 'Another one… ' I would think with satisfaction. Maybe another PR. Sometimes, another win. Always, another race trained for, completed, conquered.

They are not worth much, those trinkets, at face value. Costing a couple of bucks apiece, maybe? However, their value to me is not in the thing itself, but the memory attached. The place where I was when I first touched it, those heavenly finish lines. What happened in the minutes and hours just before receiving it... the months, even, in the journey to get there. The ways I lost myself and found myself, all in the same span of time. The sweat, the agony, the exhaustion, the emotion, the heartbreak, the ecstasy. It's all there; the medal being the shell, but the memory containing the soul of it.

I reach out, touch them all, lingering. It's been a few months since I even looked at my medals, acknowledged them, because in times like these I avoid the reminders. But that sound! I can't escape it, I can't resist it, and here I am: exposed. Vulnerable. I feel both naked and safe with all my memories, like I'm in the presence of a lover. My heart pounds as I let myself go...let myself remember… let myself desire the race again.

I don't even realize when it begins, but suddenly I'm aware of the tears slipping down my cheeks.

There was this one… my first AG medal ever, at my second 5k.

Marshall! My love affair with the half marathon begins, and never ends.

Broke 2:00 in the half=marathon here, 3,000 miles from home, with the Pacific Ocean tide crashing in the distance.

Ran one of my best races, here, at the breakthrough half that turned me from runner to competitive racer.

Erie half… where I ran the last 3 miles at close to my then-5k pace.

Marshall, revisited. Nearly a 20 minute PR in a year's time, breaking 1:45, and placing in my AG at a half-marathon with 1,200 participants.

Rehoboth. First- and only- marathon. That elusive marathon. Oh, God, this hurts.

That 10k PR, on a windy, cold, St. Pat's Day.

The Pig… a crazy hilly half.

'I came, I saw, I conquered', for all of those. I took home the medals, and I hung them. And 2 years- or more- later, I stand here, stroking them like the face of a long-lost relative. Broken outside and bleeding inside, weeping over what I've lost and keep losing and will I ever find it again? Will this tide ever turn for good?

I don't even know if this was cathartic or not, if experiencing those moments of vulnerability and grief make it worse… or if they help heal by somehow lending my subconsciousness hope? I find no answers. I just know that for the rest of the day, I carry with me this throbbing mixture of hurt, loss and yearning, the tears simmering beneath the surface. Where's a Band-aid when you need one?

You can take the girl out of the running, but you can never take the runner out of the girl.