100 Words Per Mile: I Think I'm a Demon

I’m self-destructive but I don’t want to destroy my marriage, and those two ingredients don’t bode well for an honest conversation.

January 29, 2022
20.00 miles
2:56:36

Another record, but still six miles short of what I’m going to do in a week. I guess this the part of the book where I reflect a bit on this journey. After all, almost a year ago (about three days shy), my wife and I transferred our little embryo into her uterus. In two days, she’ll be starting daycare. I’ve been telling myself I’m ready, maybe to be the rock my wife needs (because she is NOT ready), but I’m not sure I’m ready either.

Around this time two years ago, I registered for my first race. I’d been running with real intention for about a year or so, and for the first time since high school or so I was running more than four miles at a time. The race I signed up for was a 15k, which is 9.3 miles. The whole thing felt absolutely daunting, but I registered anyway, for some of the same reasons I started this project. I wasn’t prepared for how expensive it was, how official the expo and packet pickup would be. My only expectation had been to show up and run, but I learned quickly there was a little more to it.

The concept for 100 Words Per Mile has been mulling around my head for some time at this point. I’d realized that even after my shorter runs (less than a mile even), I had a renewed energy to sit and write, and even if it wasn’t any good, I’d at least get something on the page. It was all a bit manic, but that was okay. My mania has never hurt me—even though it’s annoyed some people. When I registered for the 15k, the desire to write this project grew stronger, but I didn’t have faith in myself to pull it off. Nonfiction wasn’t interesting to me, especially when I wasn’t sure there’d ever be a reader. I’m a reader-conscious writer, which could be a shortcoming of mine, but it’s a hard thing to shake. Nor have I ever really engaged with nonfiction or memoir before. Frankly, and I’m sure I’ve said some variation of this, it seemed ego-centric in a time when I was battling my own ego.

When I think about that race, I think about how much of an amateur I was. I didn’t own a pair of running shorts or a proper pair of running shoes. I had my number pinned to the chest of my shirt, until I saw everyone else pin theirs to their belly or shorts. Because I’d driven alone, and I didn’t want to rent a locker, I ran with my keys in my pocket. They dug into my thigh, especially as I crossed a couple of bridges and sprinted towards the end. Going into the race, it was my intention to take breaks. Maybe walk a bit every third mile or so. Little did I know what I’d feel. I didn’t stop once. I got frustrated when people passed me. I cleared my desired time handily. This race was huge for me.

Afterwards, I didn’t hang around. My wife met me at the finish line and I was happy to leave right after. The man who ran that first race couldn’t have predicted what the next two years held for him. It was a simpler time, just on the brink of disaster.

For example, I spent the entire rest of the day drinking with my wife and her cousin. We bar hopped, did tequila shots with a Costa Rican bartender, got wild watching college basketball, and took blurry selfies we still share from time to time. At one point, we made a brief stop at home to change and recharge before going out again. But as we were playing with the dog, my wife fell backwards, cut her head open on the corner of our wall, and like that, the night was over. She repeated, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed” for about an hour. Holding a paper towel to her head, listening to her behave so foolishly, is one of my favorite memories (though at the time I was a little terrified).

Then a week later, Tom Hanks and Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, and the whole world changed. I called the NCAA customer service line to let them know I was sad about March Madness getting cancelled. The operator on the other line sighed and said, “Me too.” Basketball, baseball, bar hopping. A lot of my everyday life simply disappeared for months at a time. We went from working in an office five days a week to working from home indefinitely. For a moment, I was even scared to run, worried that I’d breathe something exhaled by a passerby. This resulted in more money spent on baseball cards, a lot of day drinking, and a love affair with the FX show DEVS. Frankly, this was a great time for me, and against the backdrop of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would eventually die, it’s a weird time to reflect upon. My wife and I have so many positive memories of them, which feels like just a savage and bizarre thing to say.

Five months after all that, I started this project in earnest, and it’s all thanks to my lower percentage of well-shaped sperm. No one thinks they’ll need reproductive help. As I mentioned before, I was scared into thinking the opposite, that any instance of unprotected sex would result in pregnancy. This mistaken sense of ease is probably an ingredient of the stigma, and the shame some might feel if they are struggling to get pregnant. Shame is driver of a lot of ill-advised behavior. Shame can even beget shame can even beget shame.