Conversations While Running #001
everyone get yourself a friend who lets you be a 3.
This is a new series I’m adding into the Running Wylder mix. Despite 99% of my runs being solo adventures, it’s actually the social aspect of running I’ve always enjoyed the most. And not like ‘beers after a long run’ social (although that can be nice too if that’s your vibe), but like the kinds of talks that can only happen when you’re sharing space with someone over the course of a handful of a few too many miles.
Convos while running these days happen mostly over the phone (or with a toddler in a stroller or alongside a good friend of mine when I can convince her to come running with me and said toddler in stroller). While they might not always be in person these days, I still really cherish all those miles spent in conversation.
Tash and I have been friends for…I don’t even know how long to be honest. Well over a decade but feels like forever in that sense you get when you click with someone on a friend level where you know wherever either of you are in space, time and life that you’ll always be connected. We don’t talk often (because well…life and geography) but when we do it’s for a long time. We can spend 3 hours catching up on the last three months, spend absolutely no time talking about what happened in those last three months; instead spending all the time talking about all the other things and then schedule another catch up to catch up. And I absolutely love it. I walk away from our conversations always wishing we lived in the same zip code.
Full disclosure, this conversation was not spent running as we were actually walking. One of us was experiencing a sweltering heat wave and the other was suffering in the metaphorical red tent. So it’s more like ‘Conversations While Walking’ today but this a running related newsletter so let’s just pretend. I also didn’t tell Tash I wanted to write about our conversation until after we got off the phone (and Tash being Tash she of course immediately agreed). What spurred me to share wasn’t so much the conversation itself but rather how it made me feel.
As it turned out, we were both having a bit of a day and it was only noon. She had a hormonal headache and I had just come out of an emotional heavy therapy session and we were both annoyed at the small annoyances that can happen in life. The comfort of being able to sit on the phone with a friend I haven’t talked to in far too long and just simply complain about how annoying something so trivial as instagram can be or how annoying it is to have to find the right layer to wear over short tights in a heat wave as not to feel naked at the coffee shop is like putting on an old sweater and crawling into bed at 8pm on a Tuesday to binge watch RHWNY. It was like ‘hey I’m at a 3/10 and you’re not trying to cheer me up to a 10 and instead you’re just meeting me at my 3 because being a 3 is actually totally ok’ and everybody needs to get themselves a friend who sometimes just lets you be a 3 (and even better when they’re a 3 too and you can just be a pair of sarcastic venting 3’s together).
Yet when I shared my fears around opening a store and how I was having some raging imposter syndrome because I feel not enough in so many ways she normalized all of these feelings of self doubt and encouraged me to be a 10…not because there’s anything wrong with being less but because she believes I’m so much more than what my own limiting thoughts were telling me I could be. It’s this duality that I appreciated so much - that I can be seen when I’m venting, annoyed at some random Instagram influencer making stupid amounts of money as she showcases her latest Amazon finds (I really hate social media) and I can be seen when I’m at my most vulnerable, sharing my fears about actually being too less than what I think I need to be.
We’re at slightly different stages of our lives at the moment - she’s winding things down, I’m trying to get things started. What we shared through this was a mutual impatience of it all happening too slowly for both of us. To be able to listen and support - and to allow each other to just be in our own individual seasons of change was everything I didn’t realize I needed that afternoon.
I often find when I’m at my lowest or when I’m feeling particularly isolated the act of human connection is so important. That one thing I need most of all - reaching out and making that phone call - is actually so close and accessible and yet it’s the last thing I think of doing. Maybe it’s from years of societal conditioning teaching me, a female, that I shouldn’t ‘bother people’ or assuming my feelings of isolation or loneliness are somehow my own fault; a byproduct created out of lack. A lack of friends, a lack of a social life, a lack of (fill in the blank) because our lives are now measured based on likes and subconscious comparisons made over a screen. I know in my heart none of this is true, and through these moments of connection I’m reminded again of our basic human need to talk and simply relate to each other.
When I think of the relationship Tash and I have, I picture this giant figure 8. Sometimes we’re on opposite ends and sometimes find ourselves meeting in the middle but no matter where we are or how far apart we might be, we are always on the same track together. There was a long stretch of our friendship where we were both on the farthest ends of the track…connected only through text messages that were few and far between. It wasn’t until Tash actually reached out to me and was like ‘hey, I want you in my life in a bigger way because you’re important to me’ that we found our way back. I don’t think I’ve ever actually thanked her for that - thank you Tash. And thanks for connecting with me the other week, and we probably need to get another phone date on the calendar to catch up on all the things we didn’t have time to catch up on.
xx
*k
In the wake of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Israel and Gaza (I can’t even refer to it as a war because it truly is a series of unfathomable and horrific violations of human rights inflicted on innocent civilians) a few readings/posts that have brought me some comfort this week :
this newsletter written by Laura Brown, former editor-in-chief of InStyle.
this article that she references in the Atlantic that reiterates the importance of making that phone call, questions if we are actually systematically erasing the human aspect out of humanity and pinpoints my current feelings toward San Francisco with incredible accuracy.
and also this one from a year ago that talks about the difference between empathy and compassion - and why compassion might be a more sustainable (if not better) goal for us all to strive toward.
Can't read this without tears of gratitude for how we show up in each other's lives. Your words on how we are able to meet each other exactly where we are all while simultaneously lifting each other up gave me goosebumps. And you're welcome AND thank you for trusting in our friendship. Love you and excited to catch up on Monday 😉. xoxo