My race, my challenge and my strength...

This was originally going to be a status update after my race on Sunday. I've decided that it should be an entire post instead...

To all of my ex-boyfriends, this is for you:

When I entered the race I ran Sunday, and when I made the playlist for that race, I thought this would be about you. I thought I had something to prove to you.

I was wrong...the race was about me, and there were some things I needed to prove to myself.

Mile 10...Collide was the first song that played and the tears flowed behind my sunglasses. That song in particular brings out a lot of pain to me...its the one that one of my ex boyfriends dedicated to me right before he cheated on me and left me; that's why I picked it at that part of the course. It reminds me of what a very particular ex did to me, something incredibly painful that had haunted me since I was 20.

Mile 10 is the toughest physically and it became that emotionally to me as well...that's my way of dealing with things. I ripped my emotional wounds open again and I realized that you all may have thrown me aside thinking I was worthless (and in many cases told me as much)...but I'm not. I finally came to the realization that I may just be too good for you all now...I've grown so much and maybe my inner strength (that I didn't see, but everyone else did) scared you because you all knew I wouldn't 'need' you, so you felt the need to hurt me first. And at that point, I didn't know my own strength, so I let you have control over me and little by little, I became more and more bitter, angry and jaded.

I finally realize why all of this happened...and I cried as I ran that mile. Not because my legs hurt, not because my muscles were locking up...no, because while the wounds I bear were torn open and raw, and this time they're finally starting to heal the way they need to.

What you all did to hurt me stuck with me for so long and made me so bitter; the lies, the cheating, saying you loved me when you didn't mean it, hitting me (yes, I had some boyfriends who hit me...) and the mind games...I may be a little love-jaded still, but I won't let what you hurt me anymore. I can't live life that way. Your actions, your words...you aren't allowed to have that power over me; I'm reclaiming it all.

I am in control now, not you. I am better for all of this, and I'm too good for you now. One day you'll regret it when you see what I become and what opens up for me as time goes on.

Just to be an asshole; what did you do this weekend? Sleep? Read? Maybe work or see a movie? Something 'normal?' Well, I fuckin pushed my limits and body harder than ever before and shattered yet another barrier I thought I had. I proved that yet again, I have no limits except those I impose on myself while you sat on your asses.

It was just me during that 13.1 miles; and I wouldn't have it any other way.