Listen to “S02E38: Start Running – Emanuela’s Story” on Spreaker.
This installment is the first in a four-part series in which you are the protagonists.
In some ways they are the answer to a question we asked months ago, which almost sounded like a proposal: tell us your running story? How did you get started, what motivated you, what motivates you to continue?
We were not looking for race narratives or personal bests but rather the more emotional and intimate side of what is, for all intents and purposes, a very personal experience.
This is Emanuela’s story, narrated by her own voice during Fuorisoglia Live last Wednesday, June 16. His is a story that many can recognize themselves in, and we like to imagine it as the discovery of who you really are, when others-even those who love you-tell you that you are a person you do not recognize yourself in.
But let Emanuela speak.
Thisstory begins at an indefinite time in my childhood. It comes naturally to me to coincide with the formation of my character, that moment when we are all highly receptive but already guided by the outline of who we will become.
I was a lonely child, by someone else’s choice. My parents were the kind of mom who thinks you can get hurt at every step and the kind of dad with an imposing character. They regarded the influence of other children as necessarily negative, as if I could somehow be polluted by other people’s ways of being.
Mixing these factors could lead to the predictable, dangerous result of a meek, fearful, insecure character.
The trace of myself that was emerging, however, led to something else entirely.
I was a happy child in the family and deeply unhappy outside the home. Today what I endured in my years of attending schools answers to the name of bullying, in its purest form.
It was all there: the chortling, the shoving down the stairs, the choral laughter at any move I made, the exclusion from activities of any kind, the total lack of supervision, understanding, and action by those who should have done it. My contribution to the affair, unfortunately, consisted of a build that was anything but slender, a height that was already above average, a pair of rather thick prescription glasses, an innate clumsiness, and a temperament that was disinclined to react.
I lived this way for many years, being the last to be assigned to a team, getting used to the expressions of displeasure from teammates forced to include me, just as I was getting used to thinking that I was absolutely no good at any kind of sport. Laughed at, laughed at, humiliated, I limited my movements to the bare minimum in a highly conservative attitude, trying to become invisible and putting up very high defensive walls that I did not understand at the time to be built with my blessing.
Closing any door and curling up in a huddle had seemed the only possible solution, when in fact it was only the easiest, most immediate, and most dangerous one.
Fortunately, from ourselves we cannot escape, at least not entirely. Because if what defines us is only a trace, I also believe that we ourselves decide who we want to become.
At that moment the alarm bells went off through reactions that an uncaring pediatrician summed up by announcing a suspicion of autism. A hellish cycle of examinations and tests was set in motion, to which I submitted myself without a word, fueling the suspicion that there was really something in me that could be defined by a single word.
Until I landed in the office of a gaudy-shoed doctor. I still remember they were orange with yellow strings.
In my perception as a child, they made him look like a clown or a cartoon character, and I immediately liked him. That doctor had no doubt: my hands clenched into two tight fists, my silence, my shifty gaze, my mind always elsewhere, my feet moving rhythmically and constantly, were nothing but the signs of a restrained personality, of an explosive urge, of attempts kept on a leash. He said a few simple words, to my mother : “Madam, this child needs to let go. Take her to a meadow, let her run, let her be free. She is not autistic, she is in a cage.”
And so he did. As soon as we left the orange-shoed doctor’s office, my mother wanted to give it a try. He found a meadow without obstacles or danger, opened the car door and simply said, “Go.” I was unprepared. I looked at her, looked at the meadow, and then at her again. “Go.”
And I went. I literally threw myself out of the car, legs two pistons gone mad, eyes skyward, heart pounding.
That night, for the first time, I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. The snickering laughter of my companions, the dread for the next day to come, the doubt as to what would be the pretext for humiliating me, for once did not come to keep me company.
That was the day when a barely sketched embryonic form of love for running was born. It still took many years, many defeats, many pounds to fight accumulated in an adolescence marked by a vague eating disorder and the resignation of the people I asked for help.
“You have a strong constitution. You have big bones. You don’t have a physique made for sports. You can’t overdo it.”
I did not understand that I was actually simply trying to avoid the disappointment of finding out that I was really hopeless. They assumed I was not strong. That I would not be able to cope with further defeats. Trying to protect me, they were drowning me. I reached a pathologically dangerous as well as psychologically disabling weight.
The most difficult, but also the most fascinating, aspect of adolescence, the one I have to thank for bringing me together with the me of today, is rebellion. I was convinced that I was addressing my rebellion to others, when instead I was rebelling against myself and the fact that I believed what they thought of me.
I did it all by myself. I started with long solitary walks, which after the first fifteen pounds lost turned into a gym membership, no small step for a child of bullying. I overcame the fear of stumbling on the treadmill, of reconfirming myself a disaster, and simply, I went for it. I did not fall.
Ten more pounds were gone, and with them a good deal of insecurity and awkwardness. The next step was, in the most natural way possible, a great desire to try everything that I had precluded myself in previous years. Functional training, swimming, skiing, hiking in the mountains. I learned, and I fell in love. You learned that we are often the only limitation of ourselves and that many fears and insecurities we have absorbed from others, making them our own and settling into a warm and comfortable shell. I fell in love with the sensations that preceded and followed and eventually, yes, even with my poor ex-obese physique that responded to what I asked it to do and yearned to show me how far we could go.
Last was the turn of the race.
Toward running, I have always had a kind of reverential fear. I considered it the ultimate fatigue, watching the runners in their gaudy outfits as if they had been astronauts ready to board a spaceship. I admired, feared and envied them. When I realized that the only healthy form of envy is that which leads us to better ourselves, strong in the demonstrations given to myself up to that point, one day I took courage and went out.
The first ten minutes were enough for me to regain the same feeling I had that day of the meadow run. A wave of pleasure, almost violent, overwhelming, such that I began to smile to myself. First came memories of a doctor in orange shoes and a meadow, immediately followed by an exhilaration that I could only explain by comparing it to a meeting of lovers after a long journey.
A few years have passed, and I still feel towards running a strange form of respect, as if it never belonged to me at all. Like a lover you never stop getting to know, with whom the relationship is never taken for granted and must be cultivated with each encounter. To this day I still marvel at every kilometer reached and every minute stolen from the gps, still cherishing within me a little bit of that frightened and insecure little girl clenching her fists, the same fists with which she would later demolish the cage that imprisoned her.
When I run, sometimes I can’t tell if my heart beats from fatigue or excitement.
I have met my magic, and I wish everyone, one day, to meet theirs.
This episode was also recorded during Fuorisoglia Live. This is an experiment that combines the content we have accustomed you to with interaction with the audience, who, in the meantime comment, while in effect witnessing a recording of Fuorisoglia, so you can also find out how we do it :)
Have you sent your Lovers Mail yet?
In recent weeks we launched the second season of Lovers Mail. Participate and tell your story in our Outlaw podcast-just write it down and send it to info@runlovers.it.
It is so easy and once a month we will collect the best ones and read and comment on them during a special episode. We are not interested in the chronicles of the races but in the flow of thoughts and reflections that accompany us when, one step after another, we run.
What are you waiting for to send it to us?
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