I Came Last

Perfection, shame and trying your hardest

Photo by Sean Oulashin on Unsplash

‘I’m so sorry I was so slow,’ I said, and I burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry…’ and I couldn’t find any more words to describe how vulnerable, or how foolish I was feeling. How I’d literally tried to outrun myself, and I couldn’t. That I’d always nursed a secret suspicion that I was less than everyone else, and now there was proof, a time written down on a website somewhere, and I was much too scared to look.

It took me, I think, two hours and forty minutes to run a half marathon. I could check my time, but I don’t want to see it, any more than I’ve ever wanted to look at my weight, my bank balance, my report card, or my Amazon ranking. Grades and numbers make me feel completely powerless. I’m so sure, and so scared, that I will be found wanting. I have spent my life trying so hard to be perfect in as many places as possible, to compensate for my many, many deficiencies.

Here's a good joke; I took up running because I thought it would cure me of all this. Six months ago, I believed that running was a hobby that I enjoyed in and of itself, much more than I minded being any good at it. I also believed that unlike any other area of my life, I’d have some control over the results. If I ran often, I’d become faster, and stronger.

I ran around the park and through the park, saluting magpies, when the sky was poster paint blue, and pearl grey. I saw the leaves turn from green to gold to copper. I gasped when I saw parakeets. I ran to hip hop, and house, and self-help podcasts, going a little bit further every time, reaching the art gallery, the harbour arm, the carpark, the café, a whole town over and back again. I ran through walls of wind. I ran through a rainstorm that broke my headphones. And I’d come home smiling, lit up by all of it. Sometimes it felt like dancing, and sometimes it felt like something that necessitated a week’s bed rest and a nebuliser. But even a bad run felt like a blessing, because it meant the next one might be great. No matter what happened over the course of a day, a run – any run – always tipped the balance to ‘good’.

There’s a strong chance that my story is your story. I was about 30 years old before I started to entertain the idea that exercise might ‘feel good’ or be ‘fun’. In the past, I’ve lied and told people that I was the sort of girl who sneaked off for a cigarette when she was supposed to be on a cross country run. This isn’t true. I mostly remember really, really wanting to be good at sport –any sport. I wouldn’t mind being worse – if it was possible to be worse – at all the others, if only I could excel at one thing.

I can remember the vinegary, cheesy smell of the school hall. I can remember the ache of a narrow, clammy wooden beam pressing against my foot, being aware of the heft of my body, the impossibility of raising myself up the ladder, where my classmates were. I remember feeling chubby, feeling disgusting, knowing what everyone was thinking when they looked at me in my shorts and t shirt, and thinking ‘Whatever you feel about it, living in it feels worse.’

It wasn’t until I was almost 14 that I started voluntarily doing any exercise, and that was because I was desperate to lose weight. After school, I’d watch people getting on the minibus to play in a netball tournament – and then the next day, in assembly, I’d hear that they’d lost the match. Were they insane? If they weren’t going to win, what was the point? The idea of netball was very stressful. There were rules to remember, and teammates who depended on you. If you missed a shot, if you weren’t quick enough or smart enough or let anyone down, you’d die of shame.

My biggest fear was dying of shame, and that fear stopped me from living.