The Alien on the Run

“WTH??? Another post that is not the marathon race report???”
I know, I know… I’ll get to that, it’s just that if I don’t post this today, it wont make much sense. There are 2 anniversaries for me today, that somehow relate to each other.

The first one is that 10 years ago my cousin died. He was 18 when that happened and I was 17, he was the brother I never had. He was diagnosed with a very aggressive Cancer when he was 16. Went through chemo, had surgery and had his humerus replaced with a titanium bone. Then it reappeared on his lungs, went through chemo and surgery again. The third time cancer appeared it was everywhere, it was very aggressive, and not much could be done.

Because of this my teen years weren’t what you would call normal. He lived in my house while he was sick, so I was there for everything. While my friends from school were partying and doing whatever teenagers are supposed to do, I was helping him fight cancer. I wasn’t alone at this, we had 2 neighbors who were (and still are) great friends and helped us every moment they could to try and be with him and have a normal life, but it was hard. I’m not complaining though, never have and never will, whatever we went through was nothing compared to what he was going through.

He was a very special person, incredibly strong, never ever complained and tried to be happy and cheerful all the time, even on his last days. Everyone who met him would say he was their best friend. He helped me create really strong bonds with my friends and was the oldest cousin in a big family, so we all looked up to him as our older brother. When he past away he left a huge void in all of our lives.

I dealt terribly with his dead, if I did at all. That day, 10 years ago, I said that I had to take his place, to keep our group of friends together, take care of his brother and my cousins, to try and somehow fill the void he was leaving in our lives. This, of course, was the wrong thing to do. I didn’t had to do any of this, but what does a 17 year old knows about all this? Over the years I did my best to be there for everyone whenever I was needed, to make sure that everyone was alright and moving on with their lives. But by doing this I was not moving on, the truth is that I never made peace with myself and accepted his dead. And many years later I found myself not being who I want to be and not doing what I want to do with my life, I had spent so much time worrying about others, that I never had the chance to worry about myself. So I was lost and had no idea what I wanted for my life.

When I realized that, about 2 years ago, I started searching for an answer, for a path to take with my life. I started with my looks, because I hated the person that was looking back at my in the mirror. Signed up for a gym and started working out. My favorite thing in the gym was running and after a few months I quit the gym to run outside instead of the TM.

This takes me to a run exactly one year ago. It was the 9th anniversary of my cousins dead. By that time I had already run a couple of 10k races and a half marathon, but I didn’t consider myself a runner or anything like that, it was just something that I sometimes enjoyed doing. I decided to go out for a run, no distance goal, pace goal, just a run outside. But something happened that night. I ran for a very long time and thought about my life, where I was going and where I wanted to go. Thought about my cousin and for the first time cried about his dead. I made peace with myself that night. When I entered my house I was a different person, something had changed. Now I know what I want and know that I have what it takes to get it. I still will always be there for my friends and cousins, but I think I can do a better job at that if I also take care of myself. Sometimes you have to look after yourself to be able to look after the ones you love.

That day, one year ago, running changed my life. It made me a different person, a better person. Now I have a different relationship with running and endurance sports, they have become a part of my life, is what I can do when I don’t know what to do, it’s the place that I go to when I can’t find the right answer. That run turned a lost boy with no goal in his life into a man that traveled four thousand miles to visit the place where he was born and run 26.2 miles there. And right now, it feels like I’m just getting started…

Thank you for reading, this is something that I haven’t shared before. Hope it wasn’t too long. And I promise, the next post will be the marathon race report.