This was the first draft of “Running Shoes”. I eventually edited this short story with the intentions of laying it as a chapter belonging to a novel that will later be continued.
“You know I can’t tell you how many times i have told myself that I would never be here again. I couldn’t ever put myself through the pain of loving someone so deeply. With the highs, and the being in love, and the days where you just love them so much there are also the other days. The lows. The days that nobody really talks about. The days that don’t get posted on my Instagram. The days where you don’t know if tomorrow she’ll wake up with different feelings and a new plan for her life and the thought alone drives you into a day long anxiety attack. All in the same breath I can honestly say that she makes me sad and confused but the joy she brings me is something I couldn’t ever lose without a fight.”
This was only our second session but I knew that if I didn’t get all of this out to the only person obligated to not judge me, it would never leave my lips. Dr. Klein’s office is cute and quirky. I get the idea that she’s kinda like me and that makes her easier to talk to. There are photographs of what I assume are loved ones, everywhere in her office. I guess someone who knows love most likely knows loss. Perhaps, im crazy to assume this or imply that I know anything about her but I already feel crazy for seeing a therapist in the first place, so anything to make her feel like a friend I’m having coffee with versus a highly educated and trained woman who is diagnosing me as we speak. Plus, Michelle insisted that I come and that if I canceled another appointment she would be canceling our marriage. Touché.
I continued spewing out everything in my overly worked, incredibly drained brain. “You know, four and a half years ago I thought that boarding a plane to the other side of the coast would help me escape sorrow. I thought that leaving both everything I knew and everyone that knew me behind would make all of my sorrow dissipate into thin air. I thought that I out ran my sorrow but it has been my uninvited guest at every holiday, birthday, and change of season. If anyone happens to ask me what is wrong? I hide behind calling it home sick because, well, I wasn’t ready to face my sorrow.
That’s the thing about sorrow, you know. It sat me down and had a talk with me before I left Queens and told me that the harder I ran the smarter they would get. Yet there I was, running again. Sorrow then began to wake me out of my sleep to remind me that we are married till death do us part, in depression and healthy days, rain or shine. You ain’t going anywhere without me.” I was rambling on but I knew it was needed.
“So how do you deal with this, what’s your escape? We definitely all have one, naturally.” Dr. Klein asked me, leaning forward as if I were about to give her what she wanted.
“You know we are so quick to judge a heroin addict but who is judging the rest of us for indulging in OUR drug of choice? Its legal, so it’s okay, right? We don’t have track marks, instead, we have bags under our dark eyes after a netflix binge and we carry extra pounds to remind us of the feelings we ate through all 5 seasons of that show we just couldn’t stop watching. We too, have shitty sleeping habits, much like someone on drugs, but nobody is pointing fingers? Why not? Why are our coping mechanisms okay but we crucify and label them the lowest members of society when they use drugs to escape, just like us”
“So what is your drug, Aria?”, Dr. Klein asks me. “Where do you go, when you can’t physically outrun your sorrow but you know you just can’t take anymore”
“You know after she left me the first time, I moved, again. I’m always doing that. Relocating to see what some new place has to offer me that the old one wouldn’t dare. That’s at least what I tell myself to make me feel better. Maybe I really just can’t own my shit and thats why I always leave. Honestly, when I can no longer bear the reality of my environment that’s it, I’m on my way and I don’t look back.
Hearing that out loud gave me the chills. I guess this is why people go to therapy. To say all the truths they were afraid to speak.
“Wait, let’s go back to that. Why, other than not being able to own your shit, do you think you do this? When did you decide that this was the one size fits all band aid for all of your problems.” Her words pierced me in a way that made me feel like I wasn’t going to run in and out of this office like I had hoped. Maybe, just maybe, Michelle was right about me needing to finally do this.
“Well, I think I stayed too long the first time so now I would rather run. I took every punch, I ate all the abuse except at that time I didn’t call it abuse. I called it “what i deserved”. I guess I thought maybe if I leave when I am unhappy I wouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to hurt me.” I answered, answering questions I thought it would be her job to answer. Isn’t that what people go to therapists for? So that they can fix your problems that you don’t know how to fix? Dr. Klein started jotting in her notebook. Well, now she’s definitely diagnosing me or dreaming of different drugs to prescribe me or maybe she’s tired of my irrelevant problems and is doodling waiting for this hour to be up.
“What if there’s a way to just fix the problem instead of running. Aren’t you tired of starting over? Don’t you want to have a home.” She says to me slowly and in her most matter of fact voice that she was given when she crossed the stage for her bachelors degree that makes her qualified to ask me this.
“Why fix the truth?” I say, defensively. I would rather present an argument than reveal that that’s honestly the only thing I had ever wanted. “Once someone shows you who they are do you really think time and more pain would make them change? I would still be walking away, I’m just less damaged by it all if I get out early, i’m safe”. “Okay, so using your very own solution, let me ask you this” Dr. Klein was waiting for this climactic “my patient finally gets it” moment and I wasn’t ready for it. Waiting for the moment where she would make me eat my words and I could definitely wait to hear it. THIS! This is why I didn’t want to come to therapy. Yes, Michelle and I had been having so many problems since we lost Rose. I was okay with that though, I had her by my side even if we were both in ridiculous amounts of pain. Sure, we had begun to take it out on one another in ways I never planned to. She claims to understand what I went through but I can truly say she doesn’t. Michelle didn’t have to stick herself with hormone needles every single day on every single try that we made to have a baby. With a 35% success rate we should have expected in vitro fertilization to not work, until it did. Knowing that it was my body that had failed us, not the money or the operation itself, was soul crushing. We got through what some people consider the hardest parts of conceiving, yet still remained defeated. We had the same type of pain we just felt it differently and she couldn’t begin to fathom the pain I was enduring as I worked to accept that this body I was in possession of just didnt work. As a woman I had one job, so we are told. Bear children. If you can’t do that, what are you good for?
“If your partner makes you feel that sad and confused maybe this is her showing you who she is. Someone will always show you the bad after you’re already too engrossed in the good to allow it to stop you from leaving. Now, she’s shown you it all. You have felt the deep love and joy that her company has brought you. You are feeling the low lows that were also given by another individual at a different time in your life, and that low put you on a plane. Where will this one put you? This is something that only you can decide, Aria. Decisions. I think that’s the most difficult part of the process, at times, and I believe that’s why you avoid it by running.” I had never told this woman that it was a person that sent me running out of Orlando, never looking back. Was it that obvious? Making choices was never my strong suit and if she knew this after only 2 sessions then the rest of the world had to know as well.
“Well, it looks like our time is up, just think about that question. Don’t buy a plane ticket, or a train ticket, or look at new apartments assuming it’s time to put on your running shoes. Ask yourself does the good outweigh the bad and is the good enough to push you through the bad when you cannot find the strength, and we’ll talk about it next week”.
Well, back to reality. I got up to leave after a few more words but this conversation stayed with me longer than it was supposed to. This was a one hour slot in my day that wound up consuming my entire day as I ran from place to place running my afternoon errands before heading home for the day. Here it was, Sorrow, it was back. I tried to kick it at the bank because I was so distracted that I definitely forgot why I was even there. Now, it was time to pick up dinner and go home when all I wanted to do was leave town with only the clothes on my back and think about the rest later on. I knew I couldn’t do this, and it made me walk even slower as I left the grocery store with nothing for dinner but some ice cream bars and yogurt. This is what Dr. Klein was talking about, wasn’t it? Look at me! Time to make a choice and here I am, fantasizing about skipping town.
As I approached the house my legs felt like weights being pulled to the bottom of an ocean. I put my car into park, and I just sat there for a moment. My icecream was melting and my mind was racing. I couldn’t bear another night of cold words and hard blank stares. I didn’t want to argue about who was in more pain, who was feeling our loss more than the other. I wanted nothing more than to avoid my snapping which would lead to her avoiding and then end in an awkward and quiet night. I just wanted to stand in my pain a little while longer until we could find our way out. Us, side by side, together. That was when it clicked. As I watched Michelle through the window, seeing her when nobody was watching had to be the only thing that saved my marriage on that long, mentally exhausting day. She was tired. I knew she was tired. There she was, selflessly creating a dance routine for the coming week for her kids at the center despite the long day she had just had working her day job. I knew her feet ached, as they always do, but the pain seemed to evaporate. Michelle looked light as a feather as she graced our living room effortlessly, moving her body in a way that had captivated me from the moment I laid eyes on her. Watching her dance and become so beautifully engrossed in something other than Rose and I reminded me why I ever loved her. We both were in pain, we were both tired, hers was different than mine but all in all thats what WE were. Tired, drained, exhausted to the point of no quick return. It took us years to save the money to have a baby together even though the world told us we were wrong for going against how God planned for women to have children. Why did we have to be different? Why when I was in the delivery room didn’t they do more to save her? I’m stuck between whether it was because I am a black woman, or a black lesbian. At the end of the day, none of this was her fault. Michelle was angry for different reasons, maybe it was time to hear them out. So, I made a choice that I would later on share with Dr. Klein. I decided to choose my vows instead of searching for a plane ticket or a bus ride out of town, for the first time. I made a choice and it was time to stand up in it, beside my wife, for better or for worse.
