Finding Leadville Chapter 13: The Day I Left my Body

The author on the Colorado Trail, fully reclaiming her body. Here, she is seen at home in herself.

“No, no!” I thought I was shouting but it surfaced as a soft, scared moan, “Just beso, beso!” An attractive Puerto Rican man was on top of me, pressing hard against my shorts and tugging at their sides. I just wanted to be kissed. I did not want where this was leading. 

I was twenty and we met the evening before this encounter. My older brother and I were exploring Puerto Rico to celebrate his graduation from a master's program. We met new friends on the beach and, before we knew it, we were all out dancing. An impeccable host, the man linked arms with both of usus, carrying us into a night of tropical haze. He and I locked eyes, and as soon as my brother was lost in the sea of hot skin and bare feet, I kissed the man (or he kissed me). When the bar began to close down, I was nestled in his arms.

My body was fluid and happy, a magical riptide of warm breeze, gentle touch, and buzzing newness. 

The man escorted me to our hotel room the next day, alone.

I couldn’t speak much Spanish, and his English was broken.  We had mainly communicated through our bodies the last two days. But now, he was on top of me, my brother downstairs by the pool. And my hands, speaking for me since my words could not, trying to press him away. 

I did not feel safe.

I was not safe.

“Si, si,” he cooed back and within seconds I felt his heat at the side of my shorts. Everything inside of me froze. The sun streamed in the room, revealing a normal day with broad daylight hues, noticing everything, highlighting it all. Dark strains of my scarlet anger slipped through the AC vent as shame whispered with spit and spiced breath in my ear: Look at what you made him do. 

My body is not my own, I thought.

Or maybe I just felt it.

My hands dropped from his chest. I lay still. A tear rolled down my cheek as I stared up at the ceiling. 

“No…” another whisper, unheard or ignored.

Doesn't matter which.

That’s the day I left my body.

I slipped out of her, like a pair of worn pants to the floor. My spirit drifted toward the ceiling fan and stayed there. I watched as he pulled out of me, how my one tear never turned into two. I watched as he buttoned up, smiled, put his arm around me, and guided me out the hotel room down the elevator toward pina coladas by the pool.

I watched my body learn how to move through the world to shield pain. I watched as the little girl in that body shrank away, horrified and scared.

I was barely out of my teens.

No one was there to tell me, “I love you; it’s not your fault.” No one felt right for me to tell this to. I turned into a silent, secretive young woman, making a space so large inside of me it could hold this man's behavior as my own. But that space pressed me from the inside out, forcing my spirit to the side.

When I returned to college that Fall, running became foreign to me. I didn’t want to know anything about the body I was in. I was left watching it from afar, in a long-distance relationship to her, numbed and disengaged.

It would be a decade before I could speak this story aloud and get the deep listening, hand holding, and therapeutic healing that I needed. Know, dear reader, that I have. Like many wounds, however, scar tissue remains. Those scars, and the echoes of my childhood, followed me to Leadville.

The author, 21 years old

It had happened a year before by a college friend. 

Like a drunk gentleman, he escorted me to my dorm after a party. I woke up in a fog, the clock on the wall ticking toward 4 AM, to him inside of me. Without my consent. Without me knowing, my mind slurred along with my words from a night of partying. But it was a haze. Did I ask him to? Did I suggest we hook up? I wasn't entirely sure; I just knew that it didn't feel right.

The next day, I attempted to tell my then-boyfriend, avoiding the "R" word so as not to spook him, or me. He called me a ‘slut.’ The shame magnified. I went to talk to security. The campus police had me answer a million questions. The men there told me to not drink, wear decent clothing, and be safe.

Safe.

I wasn't safe in my own body.

After Puerto Rico, I felt dirty and exposed, unsure of where to go. A complicated mess lurked inside me, it felt as though my organs were being rearranged each time. I grew an increasing sense that I couldn't possibly deserve love, and that turned into me believing I didn't deserve to feel happiness and success. That there was too much wrong with me and the skin I was in. My body is a sin. Guilt and shame banged their fists in my chest, again and again. 

I became foolish and risky in my behavior with men. Due to an injury (both physical of a fractured knee and this psychic one), I wasn’t able to perform on the cross country and track team at the high level I was accustomed to in college. Instead, I drank. I danced on table tops and lost my way through campus on unsteady high heels. Boys grabbed me anywhere they liked.

I abandoned my self.

I sought love from all the wrong places.

I dated the same person on and off and on and off again; I’d cry and beg for him to love me the way I needed. But I didn't even know anymore what I needed. It was too foreign. I had left the front door of my self and shuttered each window tightly. No love could fully get in.

I got good at stuffing down the pain. A numbness broke in, stretching out its legs, pulling off its wide tongued boots -- and plopped down to stay. Running became an escape from feeling instead of a retreat to a feeling. I could block out my emotional grief by physically hurting. My twenties thrust me from place to place, run to run, race to race, relationship to relationship. Aching to be loved. Pushing my body to the extremes in order not to feel something.

But how can a body that has not belonged to herself get the care she desperately needs? The years turned, wayward and wild. Yet, running remained at my side.

As a high school freshman, I had zoomed around a track for the first time, feeling a strength whose potential I could not yet harness. I discovered that running could take me out of the house, away from Catholicism, and into a new kind of magical world all of my own. A world where I felt significant. A world where I was in charge of my body, my mind, my feelings, and in control. A world that tumbled after those moments in college. I lost hold of the scaffolding, and the foundation cracked beneath me.

For years, I was lost in my own body. For years, I forgot what true strength felt like. It wasn't until my thirties, more than a decade later, that I could come back home to myself. I took the shutters down, I opened the closets and looked under the bed. I swept and tended to the rooms within me.

Reclaiming through time, spaciousness, and adventure. Seeing what my body was -- and was not. Not a body for the Church. Not a body for the men who took it. Not a body for an unknown, future husband. I was reclaiming a body that was my own, in a place I chose to strengthen it, in ways that delighted me.

In that Alma cabin up at altitude, training for the Leadville 100, I was now remodeling and decorating.

I spent a lot of time on my own. I headed out into Summit County to find another trail, carrying my phone with the All-Trails app and the map pre-downloaded. I carried bear spray and a small pocketknife, staples in my solo-runner pockets. Patting my pack every few miles to feel their shape, I reassured myself: I was safe. I was safe. I was safe.

I set out for entire afternoons, my blood pumping, legs stretching out over the trail, ponytail flopping at the top of my head, a clear mind beneath it– and I could be free. I could have autonomy. I could surrender my body to the act of running and somehow feel like I mattered, like it all could make sense.

From time to time, I met with local runners for quality miles and good conversation. The Breckenridge Running Club was my main mode of connection. I discovered their page scrolling through Facebook in my early weeks in Alma. It wasn’t long before I met with Susan, the established Masters Marathoner, who took me onto the stretching vastness of the Colorado Trail around Breckenridge. And then I met Cindi, the chatty and vibrant Final Descents runner who had conquered cancer over the years and was training for the Leadville 100 alongside me.  Tracy, who was a seasoned ultramarathoner. Don, the treadmill world record holder. Cody, the owner of America's Highest Gym in Alma and ultimately the one to create my strength plan. I was surrounded by good people who knew me as a strong runner.

Although those connections were gold – with running companions offering me insight on how to approach the mountains, what to expect in an ultramarathon, how to dress for unpredictable weather patterns, and helping me maintain a steady “talking pace,” – I preferred to run alone, creating a deeper well of security and confidence within myself. A well that I could dip into and drink from anytime I pleased. Step by step on the alpine trails, sip by sip of security.

Every mile a reminder that this is what safety feels like in all creases, crevasses, and corners of myself. Sacred breathing from my solar plexus, steady rhythm in my heart, swing of strength in my arms.

Like a leaf making its way down a steady river toward a great sea, I began to find my way back to my self. I began to feel safe in the skin I was in. I felt like that young, freshman runner in her track uniform, full of life and love for the sport -- and a new love for my body. The rustle of the trees cheered me on, and the audible throb of summer's insects soothed me through every dusty mile.

Notice thoughts. Speak to yourself with compassion. Embody the change. Mantras that followed me from the trailhead up and into the Rocky Mountain wilderness. I am worthy. I am mighty. I am everything I need to be.

In Alma, April turned to May. Then, June dependably arrived. I got my mind and body ready to run two important races on my way to the Leadville 100: The Leadville Trail Marathon and the Silver Rush 50.

I am mighty. I am everything I need to be.

We are the Mighty Mountain

I painted for an hour

when my mind would not sit still.

Every little brushstroke

brought me flow up until

the thunder started rolling

lightning slashed the sky

so, I wandered to the kitchen

cup of coffee, slice of pie

to look out beyond the fir trees

at the mountain standing tall--

I wondered if it mattered

my mind couldn't relax at all.

Then I felt the mountain

rising in my bones

I realized every thought was like

alpine wind that's blown

sweeping noise inside me

kicking up what's there:

rain and sleet and hail

storming icy air.

But peaks don't bother changing

the brilliance that they are

just because the weather strikes

or leaves behind a scar.

So I bit into my pastry

with my brow turned to the sky–

We are a mighty mountain.

Our thoughts: weather passing by.

The author as a high school runner, mighty in her track uniform