I Didn't Know His Voice Was Still in My Head

I’m 13 years old. My feet pound against the pavement. My heart is beating fast inside my chest. I can feel sweat dripping down my lower back, down my forehead and into my eyes, above my upper lip. I feel slightly nauseous, but I can see my house, just down the street and around the bend. The giant maple trees, decades old, their branches reaching high into the sky, line the road as far as my eye can see. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Finish strong.

A cornfield on the right, a swampy grassland on the left, just three-tenths of a mile to go… finally, I reach the end of the driveway. I made it. I bend over, breathing deeply through my nose and out through my mouth, trying to lower my heart rate. I reach for the water bottle I left out for myself and chug it like I haven’t had a sip of water in three weeks.

Endorphins course through my veins and I am proud. Proud that I got outside, that I moved my body, proud that I am strong and capable and that when I put my mind to something, I accomplish it.

Later that night, I take the best shower of my life and collapse into bed. I fall asleep like a baby, courtesy of that intoxicating exhaustion that you feel after exerting yourself physically, at the end of a long day, that sends your body into a deep state of relaxation, knowing you worked hard and now it is time to rest.

Now, I'm 23 years old. I’ve been with him for eight years. This time, I’m at the gym. I’m on the treadmill. I can see him in the corner of the weight room, squatting. I have music blasting in my ears, and my focus switches between the brutally boring news subtitles playing on the TV mounted to the wall directly in front of the treadmills, and him. I can see his eyes drifting and wandering. I am hyper aware of every single female in the gym. I know what they are wearing. And I know every single time his gaze lingers for just one second too long.

After only a few months of dating, I quickly learned his “ultimate” body. Strong, muscular, fit, athletic. My finger reaches for the up arrow, and I increase my speed. I’m sprinting now, and with each step, my brain screams,

“Keep going.

Faster.

Burn more calories.

Get rid of your mom stomach.

You have to get your legs more defined.”

I’m miserable, because I hate the treadmill. I hate doing cardio inside. In fact, I hate running now. It has become a form of torture, a desperate attempt at losing the post-baby weight, to get back that body I used to have at 15 when I first met him. I didn’t understand then what I know now: that there is nothing I can do, no amount of working out, no amount of changing my body, to make him love me more.

After the gym, I stand alone in the bathroom at our house, staring in the mirror. My eyes are dull and lifeless. I have dark circles. I think back to that girl that I used to be, and my heart aches inside of my chest. A tear drips down my cheek. She is gone. She is gone forever. She has been replaced with this lifeless shell of a person. I know that something is wrong, something is so wrong, but I don’t know what. I can’t explain it or put it into words. All I have is this feeling. This feeling that he is literally draining the life out of me. The colors around me are slowly fading into black and white. That girl who threw sneakers on and ran outside through the seasons, as the corn stalks grew taller and then were replaced with huge, round hay bales, the girl who was proud of herself for running three miles, who wanted to wake up the next day and do it all over again… where did she go? She is gone forever.

I’m 33 years old. Over the last five years, I have been through hell and back. I have fought my way back to the surface. I have made it through exactly 100% of the days where I opened up my eyes in the morning and dread washed over me, and all I wanted to do was roll over and go back to sleep. But I could hear my boys’ footsteps outside my bedroom door, and now they’re barging in and asking, "Mommy, what’s for breakfast? What are we doing today?” And so I got out of bed, even though it physically hurt. They needed a safe parent, and so I went through the motions.

I remember the first time I worked out after that night he turned his back on doing the right thing once and for all and walked out the front door. It was a few months later, and I was in my mom’s basement, a pair of 15-pound dumbbells and a kettlebell in front of me. I hit play on the most upbeat music I could find, and started to move my body. Before I hardly even realized what was happening, tears were streaming down my face. So many hours of workouts with him, in his office, a YouTube workout video playing on his double monitors, our favorite tunes blasting, the endorphins flowing. Those were the moments that I was the happiest. He was vibrant, and present, and we were together. The mood would last for hours.

But I’m in my mom’s basement, and I’m sobbing, because my body remembers. When you work out by somebody’s side for 13 years, it almost feels like they’re there in the room right next to you. But he wasn’t there. I was alone. How do I get my brain to explain that to my body?

And still, I did the hard work. Hours and hours of processing, of screaming and crying, of walking and praying, of Zoom and in-person therapy appointments, questioning why and cursing and spiraling and catastrophizing. I fought my way through the current, up through the surface, onto the shore, where I lay, sprawled out and exhausted. Little by little, day by day, I picked up all of the broken pieces.

It started out as a whisper, and grew louder and louder, until now it is the battle cry of my heart.

She is still there.

You are not your trauma.

You are not what has been done to you.

You can build a life that you love.

Apart from him.

Over the years, I never stopped thinking about running. I had little bursts of seasons where I would try to get back into it, but it would never last. Because I was still using it as a punishment, as a way to burn calories and whip my body into shape. My thoughts, the way I would talk to myself during and even after my runs, had become all twisted and convoluted. After spending over a decade with a man who shook the very foundation of who I used to be, his standards had become my own.

But six weeks ago, I decided to reach for the sneakers again.

I knew that I needed to ask myself some really hard and uncomfortable questions.

Why do I want to run?

Am I running to punish myself and to burn as many calories as possible?

Is it only worth running if I can run “fast”, holding myself to a standard of athleticism that he created?

Forcing myself to answer these questions honestly was sobering. Because I realized that somewhere along the way, those lies had become truths.

I want to run because I want to be skinny.

I am running because I know running burns calories, and builds lean muscle.

I am slow, and out of shape, and what is the point of running if my times are embarrassingly slow?

But what about that 13-year-old girl that went out for a run just because she loved how it made her feel?

So I reached for the sneakers. I downloaded Strava. I added every single friend that I knew loves to run. Even the ones that are 15 years younger than me. The ones who run track for their schools, who are in peak physical fitness.

That first run, I hit record, and it was not pretty. I had to pause and walk multiple times. My heart rate was skyrocketing and I felt nauseous after only five minutes. But I kept on going. I ran 2 miles.

At first, I was really proud. And then I stared at my pace. 13:30 per mile. I started to feel that shame creep in, that voice in my head… that is embarrassingly slow. That’s basically a walk. That’s the best that you can do? Real athletes can run a mile in under 8 minutes. You’re really going to post this for people to actually see????

I almost hid the run from all of my followers. Maybe posting my workouts on Strava is a bad idea. Maybe I should run for four weeks, keep it under wraps, and THEN start posting.

But then I stopped myself.

Did 13-year-old Deborah care about how fast she was running? No. Did she lay awake at night at 1 a.m., her eyes burning, a pit in her stomach as she doom-scrolled running Instagram reels, the “Come get ready with me for my 10-mile easy run,” falling into the comparison trap, knowing that her fastest pace is an influencer’s rest-day jog?

So I made the run visible to my followers. Determined to take back running for myself, to fall back in love with moving my body, just because I WANT to move my body, and not because I have to. I forced myself to put my ego aside, to challenge the lies and the toxic social media comparison culture that had somehow become twisted together with his voice inside my head.

The support was overwhelming. And I realized so quickly… my fears were not reality. Nobody cares what my pace is, or whether I had to walk three times, or whether my heart rate was in Zone 1 or Zone 5.

Nobody cared, except for me.

But most importantly, six weeks into running again, and I don’t see his face anymore. I don’t hear his voice. I hear mine. And it is getting kinder. It turns out that when you challenge the lies inside of your head, when you force yourself to combat them with the truth, they really do grow quieter.

You can do this. You can do hard things. You are getting stronger every day. You are doing things that five years ago would have been impossible.

You are reclaiming those pieces of yourself that you thought he stole.

They are still there.

They are still yours to take back.

With every run, it feels like I am running backwards in time, back to my childhood home, back to the twisty-turny roads, the acres and acres of farmland stretching for miles. I’m running back to her, back to that girl with a sparkle in her eye and a love for moving her body, a love for living.

I’m finding my way back home to her.

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