So... it's been a while. Life has gotten in the way. And with little feedback you tell yourself, "Why write?" Sometimes you write for yourself, just to have somewhere to put it, just so it's out there. So that's what I'll do.
I had an odd experience a few weeks ago during spinning class. It was during my now usual Sunday morning class. We were about 45 minutes into class. I was dripping in sweat... literally. It was blinding my eyes, leaving a salty taste in my mouth. Look up "hot mess" in the dictionary and you could have seen my picture at that point.
And then something funny happened. A song came on over the speakers, a recognizable beat followed by unmistakeable lyrics: Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes singing "Empire State of Mind." I listened to the words of a song I had heard a hundred times before, but this time something was different. I could feel my throat tightening. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep the tears from coming. No one would notice though, I was sweating too much, and we were all working too hard.
This particular Sunday happened to be the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. And I'm not a very emotional person, but the irony of the situation that morning was just too much. Things were just too much the same that day.
Flashback 10 years to a different state, a different city and a building only several miles from Ground Zero. I'm a 19-year-old girl waking up on September 11, 2001, to beautiful blue skies and a full-day of classes, work and whatever else in the city that never sleeps. As it was on so many other days when I was at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus, I put on my running clothes and shoes, grabbed my Walkman (those were pre-iPod days) and headed for the school's tiny fitness center. It was sometime after 8 a.m., and I planned on putting in about 7 miles.
How far I went and how hard I worked are beyond me, but how my workout ended will never be forgotten. The world came crashing down around me and I listened to it all unfold on my old yellow Walkman. They say on days like these--9/11, the Kennedy assassination, Pearl Harbor--you never forget where you were. And for me, exercise will forever be linked to that sinking feeling of knowing the world as I knew had changed irrevocably.
I spent the rest of that day gathered around the TV with my roommates and friends, watching as normalcy diminished and our lives were filled, albeit temporarily, with despair and cautiousness, and then later, a new sense of hope and strength. We walked out on the street, the white smoke rising in the distance, people walking around in varying states of shock. It was incomprehensible.
I was far enough away from the immediate danger that day, but ask anyone and they will tell you they were in some way affected by what happened at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a remote field in the middle of Pennsylvania.
And so, ten years later--almost to the exact moment of first impact--I found myself thinking of that old yellow Walkman, tasting the same sweat and gasping for the same air. I realized that beyond just making my body healthy, exercise had helped heal my soul.
There is so much that is unknown in the world, so much in life that we cannot control. To be able to put on your running shoes and hit the pavement, or clip into the cages and pump your legs through an hour-long spinning class is comforting. I can dig in and just let go of the weight on my shoulders. I can thank God for giving me another day to do this.
I can't change what happened that Tuesday morning 10 years ago. I can only do what I know how to do to get by.
