Ten

There are ten stop signs that I pass on the route that I run through my neighborhood.

When I first started running...wow a long time ago, when I was overweight and had just stopped smoking cigarettes...I would tell myself to just get to the next light post before I stopped running. I wanted to do it because I wanted desperately to be in shape. It helped me understand that I hated running. I really hated it.

I had to run at one point for instructor qualifications. I got better at it. I hated it even more.

Then I started this project. I decided that I would run 1000 miles before my next belt test. I decided that I would mark off a little box for every stinking mile. I knew I needed to do it not to become a runner or to make myself like it, I needed to do it for the discipline. When the task started to have a self imposed purpose it got better. I realized that as I was battling with myself, as I was beginning to defy that inner voice that kept telling me how much I hated it, it got better. Better. I still don’t like it. It has helped me understand that what I do like is having the opportunity every few days to let that voice know that it needs to shut up. That voice inside my head can get pretty loud. So loud that it needs to get the wind knocked out of it. It needs to be growled at, snarled at, dealt with. It needs to be shown that I am doing this. That voice is the same one that tells me that I’m not good enough. It wants me to feel insecure because a scared and unfocused mind is easier to keep in that comfortable lie. It tells me not to start because I am not going to like it. It doesn’t like things that are hard and uncomfortable and it screams STOP! STOP. You hate this, JUST STOP!

I look at every one of those ten stop signs along that route. I stare it right in the face like the stubborn, willful girl that I am - and I refuse.

I wondered later if the man on his lawn saw me flipping the stop sign the bird as I got close enough to touch it’s red angry face. I didn’t care in that moment if he saw me or what he thought about my outburst if he did. I was too busy running past that sign. I needed to get on to the next one so I could run right through it too.