Body Image, Self-Empowerment & Running without Headphones

By Carolyn Bernucca

Trigger Warning: This essay contains mentions of disordered eating and exercise habits.

I started running when I was 12 years old. My guelito has run in races through the majority of his adulthood, and older girls who I thought were cool ran track. I guess those two things combined—fondness for my family’s history and hopefulness for my future as a soon-to-be teenager—compelled me to join the track team.

My middle school track coach was a kind, elderly man who had lost two fingers in a machinery accident. He was also a substitute teacher at my middle school, and was known for giving out Tootsie Rolls to students. He never yelled at us.

By the time I was 14, I had stopped eating Tootsie Rolls and other foods that I learned were “bad” for me. I was logging my daily calorie intake with an app on my iPod Touch. I was tracking my exercise, too—Tae Kwon Do, kickboxing, track, lacrosse — and teaching my brain to only appreciate my body if it was adhering to invented metrics.

I can remember being aware of my body and how it was perceived as early as seven years old. My friends in elementary school and I knew who was “fat” and who was “skinny.” Adults complimented my “fast metabolism.” On some level, subconscious or perhaps conscious, I became aware (and was relieved) that I had a body that people approved of.

In my scholastic running career, which lasted through the end of high school, I tried the 55M, 100M, 200M, 300M, 400M, 4x100M relay, 300M hurdles, and 100M hurdles. I wasn’t particularly gifted in speed or endurance, but I liked running because it was simple and personal: just me, my sneakers and the thrill of going.

My guelito (grandfather) running in a race in Tennessee.

Post-high school, though, and up to today, without the routine of teammates and coaches and practices and meets, I’ve needed something else to run: music. You see, over the music, I can’t hear my breath, uneven and weakened by cigarettes. I can’t hear my footfalls and over-analyze their harshness, as though the city pavement has not seen greater horrors than a woman trying to take care of herself. I can’t hear the things people say to me, their lips moving confidently with the knowledge that there is nothing I can do to avoid facing degradation in the middle of a self-empowerment practice.

The only thing that cuts through the music is an app that tells me every five minutes how much time it’s been, how far I’ve run, and my average pace. Afterwards, my brain reminds me that my run from three months ago was faster, scolds me for being this tired, and laments the fact that I’ve allowed another year pass without having run in a race. 

Physically, running makes me feel good. The calming repetitions of my feet hitting the ground, the satisfaction of traveling away and then coming home, like returning from a vacation. In recent years, running has hurt me. I have taught myself to be motivated only by negative self-talk, by shame for committing such heinous crimes as existing within a body. I cannot run without being angry at myself for failing to meet the unrealistic standards I’ve been holding myself to for over a decade.

Over the last six years, I’ve stopped running for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. I never feel any better about myself when I stop (in fact, I often feel worse), and when I get back into it, I fall into the same habits. Until recently, I had determined that it was not worth it to figure out how to once again take only pleasure in this thing that I love.

When I explained this to my therapist, she suggested returning to the basics of my passion for running: no headphones, no phone, no music, no app. The thought of leaving these things behind, of opening up more space in my brain for these defeatist thoughts to roam free, induced a tightness that began in my chest and ended deep in my abdomen. I didn’t even consider that maybe I could combat them without the help of Paul Simon and Kelis, or that without the app, I wouldn’t be re-triggering them at five-minute intervals.

But the next evening, as an electric mix of crispness and warmth hit my face on my walk from the subway, I knew I had to try. When I got home, before I lost my nerve, I changed clothes, grabbed my keys, and I was off.

It was not easy, or even peaceful. 30 seconds into my run, someone made a comment about my forehead. It wasn’t funny, but I almost laughed. I heard my breath get short at times, and cursed myself for spending the entire summer indulging in nicotine and vape juice. I felt anxious about not having a phone with me in case of emergency; with my ears open, sounds came out of nowhere and made me jumpy. Even as I basked in the dusk, I was aware of the disappearing daylight and the lack of streetlights.

Fear permeated the inside of my body, as well. It was scary not knowing how long I’d been running, or how far I’d gone. I caught myself trying to estimate these things based on past runs, and it was difficult to accept the fact that I couldn’t actually know. It felt like I was cheating, like the workout wasn’t legitimate unless I spent it berating myself. A reluctant liberation coursed through my veins as I tried to welcome this idea of immeasurable movement.

I kept on running. I thought about how good the air felt, how maybe we’d get a real fall this year, how the leaves weren’t on the ground yet. My bedroom windows face East, so I don’t get to watch the sunset, one of my favorite activities in the world, from my space. On my run sans headphones, with my eyes, not my ears, as my most engaged sense, I saw the whole thing. Even when my back was to it, I felt the pink blanketing me and the rest of the streets. As quickly as harmful thoughts entered my mind, they were replaced by gratitude for the sun, and for my limbs, for carrying me to it.

Children shrieked and sang, cherishing the last few days of post-6 PM daylight. My neighbors, who have probably lived there longer than I’ve been alive, caught up with each other while taking out the trash or just stepping out for some air. A tiny baby yelled, “Hi!” when I ran by, and then giggled when I turned around and said “Hi!” back.

As I approached the end of my route, I felt a surge of energy. But rather than use it to punish myself, to race to the finish line as fast as I could, I kept my pace and allowed myself to indulge in it. This glowing orb in my stomach, in my chest, in my legs, in my arms, this feeling that I’d done something because I wanted to, not because I would feel bad about myself if I didn’t. When I reached my stoop, there were no stats to check or comparisons to make, other than how I felt before and how I felt after. And I felt magnificent.

I don’t know when I will run with headphones in again. For now, it’s me, my sneakers, and the thrill of going.

Carolyn is a poet and journalist covering music, pop culture and politics. Her micro-chap, FINA, is out now, pay-what-you-can, via Ghost City Press. Her work has appeared in Pigeons & Planes, The Fader, The Creative Independent and Complex.

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