i am standing here in the dark at five in the morning and the air smells like damp pavement and icyhot and old sweat and i want to throw up all over my expensive sneakers that i bought because some kid at the running store told me they would save my knees but nothing is going to save my knees nothing is going to save any part of me because i am sixty eight years old and i have spent the last decade of my life doing nothing but wiping chins and checking pulses and making sure the pill organizer is filled with the little yellow ones and the big white ones and if i miss a single beat the whole world collapses or at least HIS world does and god forbid i ever do anything for myself without turning it into a goddamn production for the neighborhood i didn't even want to do this i just wanted to walk around the block without someone asking me how martha is doing or how the hospice nurse is working out but then i started jogging and then i started running and suddenly everyone in the goddamn bridge club is clapping and saying how INSPIRING i am and how they want to donate to the alzheimers foundation in my name and now i have five thousand dollars of other peoples money hanging around my neck like a millstone and if i dont finish these twenty six miles i am a failure and a thief and a fraud and i can already see the looks on their faces the little tilted heads and the soft voices saying oh well you tried your best dear after everything you've been through and i want to PUNCH them in their smug sympathetic mouths the nausea is a physical thing like a cold fist sitting right under my ribs pushing up against my lungs and every time i take a breath i taste the blue gatorade i forced down and the bitter realization that i am trapped again i am always TRAPPED i thought this would be the one thing that was mine the one thing that wasn't about caregiving or sacrifice or being the strong one but i just turned it into another JOB another way to let people down if i dont perform exactly the way they expect me to perform and i am so sick of performing i am so sick of being the person everyone counts on while i am crumbling into dust and gravel right in front of them forty years of marriage and thirty years of parenting and ten years of nursing a man who doesnt even know what day it is and i thought i could just run away from it for four or five hours but i brought the whole goddamn neighborhood with me in my pocket and i can feel the weight of every ten dollar donation from the ladies at the library and every twenty from the guys at the hardware store and they are all watching the little tracker app on their phones waiting for me to hit the markers and if i stop if i just sit down on the curb and quit i have to face them all i have to tell them i wasted their money and i couldn't even do this ONE SIMPLE THING right my hamstrings are already tight and the gun hasn't even gone off yet and there is this woman next to me who looks like she's ninety pounds of pure muscle and she's smiling and bouncing and i want to scream at her to shut up because she doesn't know what it's like to have your entire identity sucked out of you through a straw until you are just a pair of hands that delivers food and changes sheets and now a pair of legs that has to run for CHARITY because god forbid a woman my age just does something because she wants to feel the wind on her face without it being a STATEMENT or a FUNDRAISER or a MISSION it is just lists and more lists and more lists in my head check the oxygen check the bedsores check the bank account check the watch check the laces check the soul and find out there is nothing left in there but spite and exhaustion and a deep burning HATRED for the fact that i am even here in the first place i should be in bed sleeping but i haven't slept through the night since 2014 because i am always listening for the sound of a fall or a groan or the silence that means everything has finally stopped and now i am listening for a starter pistol like it's the sound of my own execution i can feel the tears starting and i am trying to blink them back because if i start crying i wont be able to breathe and if i cant breathe i definitely cant run and then i am the woman who crumbled at the starting line the woman who couldnt handle the pressure the woman who took the money and gave up before she even started and i will never hear the end of it it will be the first line of my obituary she was a devoted wife and a tireless caregiver who almost ran a marathon once for charity but she just wasnt strong enough in the end and i will be DAMNED if i let that be the story they tell about me the crowd is moving now we are shuffling toward the timing mats and the sound of a thousand feet is like a drumbeat in my skull and i am praying to a god i stopped believing in years ago that my heart just gives out at mile twenty so i dont have to finish but i dont have to go home either i just want to be DONE with all of it the running the caring the pretending the CONSTANT WEIGHT of everyone elses expectations pressing down on my shoulders until my spine snaps like a dry twig and i am just a pile of bones on the asphalt while the twenty year olds jump over me to get to the finish line i am going to run until my toenails fall off and my lungs burn and i am going to do it because i am AFRAID of the silence that comes when i fail and i am afraid of the look of disappointment in my sons eyes because he needs me to be the hero so he doesn't have to feel guilty about not being here to help and i am going to run because if i dont i am nothing i am just a ghost in a house full of medical equipment and i am so TIRED of being a ghost i am so GODDAMN TIRED of everything and everyone and if one more person tells me i am an inspiration i am going to scream until my throat bleeds.