flawless
I have been having a hard time with running from November last year. I felt like I lost my direction, I felt like I lost myself. Why was I running? What do I want to prove? It didn't help that every morning when I wake up, I would feel a stab of pain so severe it blinds me. Every step was torture. My biggest strength (and also weakness) is my stubbornness. I wanted to improve so badly that I still pushed myself. And everything didn't work out. I was in pain constantly, and I was disappointed with myself daily. Something that has given me so much joy, was now giving me so much pain. That was when I realized, I cannot do everything alone. And support poured in from every direction. In an intensely competitive field, running is after all, a race- where you're in solitude most of the time, having only yourself as your biggest motivator and your biggest critic- nearly every one I know or spoke to would offer advise, or the least they offered sympathy. Because they have been there, or because injury is and remains their biggest fear. For such a solitary sport, the community is amazing. Perhaps having had spent all that time challenging our bodies to defy the pain and having exhausted our mental strength to tell ourselves to not give up gave runners empathy so human that the great Kathrine Switzer was famously quoted to have said: "If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon." Running has restored my faith in humanity. Running allows me to be human. I am not going to be forced to leave without a fight.
