Day 1: The Long Run (6/19)

Everyone handles situations differently. Just the same as we all grieve in our own special ways. I handle most situations and emotions by running. I use that words loosely because “running” has come to have many definitions throughout the years. When I went through random sprouts of sadness (particularly this past year) my mom always ended each of my sobbing phone calls with, “why don’t you run - you always feel better after you run.” So true.

There are many different kinds of runs. I categorize mine into four. Two of which are most common, at least as of recently.

1.) I run when I’m confused, unsure, or feeling lost. These runs are long and steady. They are a search for something. Constantly looking forward, in an earnest hunt for an answer. If I keep running long enough, I will eventually find it – at least so I believe.
2.) Runs to clear my head. Those runs always turn out to be practically sprints. Running away from an invisible problem that is forever on my heels, one step shy of running me down. But if I run fast enough, it’s as if I will be able to outrun it. Those runs are very short.

Today I ran again, this time it was 4.5 hours in a plane, 3 hours waiting in the stifling heat at the entrance to Port au Prince, followed by a 2.5 hour drive in a truck that creaked over every bump in the road from PAP to Leogane. Like all my long runs this one, too, was in search of many answers.

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I have been milling over in my head how to describe the drive from PAP to Leogane. And my final conclusion is: there are no words. Nothing I could ever write, no lengthy descriptions or beautifully terrifying adjectives could ever paint a good enough picture of what I saw and experienced on that drive. The sheer amount of people crowding in the so-called streets which were over-filled with make-shift tents and vendors selling everything from tires to papayas. Faces weaving in out of cars trying to sell water, bread, popsicles - anything. Every time the truck slowed even a few miles, little boys begging for money and food bombarded the half raised window - the only protection against reaching arms. At some turns there were so many people in the streets only one lane for cars existed and shirt sleeves flapped across my face. Everywhere I looked there was destruction – mounds of rubble, mile after mile of garbage – and yet it was evident that so much of that existed pre-earthquake. But, you better believe the quake left her filthy prints everywhere, despite the chaos that may have existed before her breath.

I went to Haiti for many reasons (that, I’m certain, is better saved for another day), one of which was to get away. With each pile of broken down buildings we passed, each longing face we left behind, each mile that brought us deeper into the country, my life in New York slipped further into the distance. It all seemed so silly now, so inconsequential, so selfish. All the responsibilities, the problems, the stress, the heartbreaks…they all just melted in the blistering sun, leaving behind a blank slate ready to start over - to be wide open to all the love and suffering this country has to provide.