Dear running; My greatest love.

 Dear running,

You are my happiness and my pain. You are my stress reliever, but also my stress. You leave me going to bed feeling accomplished, you leave me going to bed in tears. How can you make someone feel so many things at once? Why is it that you are the cause of my sadness, but can also make me feel invincible? I have never met someone quite like you. 

You knock me down over and over again, but the way you make me feel after a long run or a meet day where the entire team PR’s, you make me smile and forget about all the times you made me cry myself to sleep. 

Every time I get injured you make me doubt myself. You make me wonder why I do this crazy sport if each time I start to make progress I end up back where I started. On the sidelines instead of on the starting line. In the stands instead of on the podium with my teammates. Each time though I see the little light at the end that makes me smile no matter how far away it seems. I swim longer, I do more abs than I ever have before, I eat clean, and I take the ice baths. I do it all more than the day before because I still find hope. However, each time it gets harder and harder to find that hope. Each time I think about throwing my running shoes away. Especially now. I am a senior in high school. Six out of my eight seasons of running I have been injured. This current season being one of them. As a senior you want to finish strong, you want to be able to represent your school one last time at the state meet and you want to end on a high note. However, if life went exactly how we wanted it to I would not be writing this. It’s hard finding that little sliver of hope and I’m struggling right now, it’s even harder to not give up, but for some reason I can’t because I know that this is God’s plan for me. Sometimes you have to let go and put you’re trust in him. One of my favorite verses is from Psalms 3:5-6 “Trust in the lord with all your heart and not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight” at some point you have to have faith in him that he knows what he is doing. Everything happens for a reason and although I may go to bed in tears every night right now, I have faith in the lord and I know that this pain will not last forever. 

So to my greatest heartache, but also my greatest love. I will never let you go. 

Sincerely,
A runner

- Ellie Margulis (@ellie_margulis)