Magenta Sneakers

Every year for my birthday, I buy myself a nice present. This has been a tradition since I first started working, a long ten years ago. A karaoke machine. A football jersey. A fancy perfume. Last year was no exception. A few days before my birthday, I went to the best place on earth (JC Penney, obviously), and browsed around for hours until finally finding the perfect gift. When I got home, the first thing I did was to take a photo of my spanking-new, beautiful magenta Nike sneakers to send to him.  

It’s a strange thing, falling in love. Suddenly, all you ever want to do is talk to that person, even about the most mundane, silly things. You want to share your every move with him because—well, you wish you could be with him at all times. All the feelings you didn’t know you had suddenly burst out from your little stony heart, like a supernova exploding into stardust, and you become the most beautiful, iridescent, delightful cliché. It’s true, you know it, and you still don’t care. Because suddenly all things feel like they make sense and all the waiting and the loneliness and the THIRD WHEELING are a distant memory.

Ah, you know I’m pulling your leg, right? Last May was one of the most difficult times in my life. Suddenly all the promises that he had made laid broken before me, and my hope and joy had fled far away. I was trying with all my might to hold together my sandcastle as it was being viciously attacked by an imminent rise of tide, but it was only me holding onto it. I kept telling myself that he couldn’t possibly help me, because he was preoccupied with holding himself together, sorting himself out, finding himself, making sense of the convolution in his soul. I kept telling myself that if I truly loved him I needed to stay put, wait in patience, keep my thundering heart in check, prevent my blood from boiling over, scold my sense of justice for feeling offended about his actions. It wasn’t really him. It was all the ghosts, the skeletons in the closet, the monsters under the bed.

So I took the picture of the sneakers and sent it to him, like a child showing off her new toy on Christmas morning. And just like a child who finds out Santa Claus isn’t real, I sat there in disbelief as I read his response, sat there feeling the blood in my veins turn cold and the shutters of my heart closing up for winter, sat there realizing that it wasn’t about patience, or kindness, or the sheer will to keep us together. I sat there as the fact slapped me across the face:

“Why would you buy those? It’s not like you’re going to use them. Maybe you could treat yourself to some free-weights that you’ll never lift, or perhaps a bicycle you’ll never ride while you’re at it--”
“Sometimes I might go on a walk or a jog--”

“So you’re planning to? You do realize that your legs won’t spontaneously start jogging by themselves one day, right?”

Skepticism. Sarcasm. Ridicule. About a damn pair of shoes. I sat there as I realized that he didn’t love me. That whatever he thought he felt for me was not love. Because how, just how could the man that claimed to want to love me for the rest of my life, to want to make me smile every day, to want to protect me from the universe, to want to make me feel cherished, how could he go out of his way to wound me, about something so simple, when I hadn’t done anything to him, had never tried to humiliate him, embarrass him, or belittle him?

Writing this, a year after it happened, makes me rage. How could I have allowed it? Where was I—the real me—as this man was tearing me apart?  We all like to boast about being strong, independent, resilient. But in what moment should the advice “if you truly love him, accept him as he is and forgive him” not be valid anymore? When is it no longer “no one is perfect” and becomes “he’s no good for you”? For me, it was this. This was the last straw. Suddenly I wasn’t the most beautiful woman on earth. I was just a lazy couch potato, a fatass, a woman with no willpower. That was it. I might be a lazy couch potato. I’m definitely a fatass. But I am definitely not a woman with no willpower. The love I felt for him was fighting to survive, but he made sure to crush it. He drove it to the brink and then pushed it down into the void. And when it was gone, all I had was me and a pair of magenta sneakers.

A year has gone by. My magenta sneakers have walked—even jogged—hundreds of miles. The signs of wear are there: tear, upper left side, right shoe; significant scrap, tip of left shoe; dark mud stains all throughout both shoes. At first, these shoes fit too tight and they gave me the most atrocious heel blister that made me unable to wear closed-toe shoes for two weeks. But that didn't stop me from using them again. Remember what I said about my willpower, reader? He underestimated me because I let him. But, more importantly, I had underestimated myself.

 Loving him, I had borne a false cloak of holiness over my shoulders that said I needed to be patient with him and love him despite himself, and that I was going to love him into sanity, confidence, joy, healing. He knew this, and he used it as an excuse to treat me like shit. Jealousy. Insecurity. Inconsistency. Lies. Manipulation. I was supposed to love him out of all that. No, reader. A pair of magenta sneakers made me realize that I needed to love myself enough to walk away from the man I had seemingly dreamed of my entire life (he did have some good qualities, after all). But what if it meant I was going to be alone? What if it meant that no one else would come along?  

Then I will go into my closet, pull out my tennis shoes, pop them on my feet (without even having to undo the laces), and run, run until the soles are gone and my soul soars up and my heartbeat is so high that my heart bursts because I rather die the most horrific death (working out) than stay with a shell of a man who cannot love and cannot accept love. So every day, I put on my sneakers and get going, chasing after the woman I hope I’ll be once again.