Four years ago I wasn't athletic, I was morbidly obese. Twelve years ago I was stuck in a hospital bed thinking I may never get the chance to be athletic again. And in the time between then and now, in my head, I've always carried both of those facts as qualifiers to any athletic accomplishment. My very own "good, for a girl" tag on the end of each one.
Most of the time, I do impress the hell out of myself with what I'm capable of doing and I'm perfectly fine to have that perspective as an ever present reminder of how far I've come and how much progress I've made. But sometimes I've wondered if as an athlete a time would come when I would just be good at what I do. No qualifier. Just, "wow, that was a great lift" without the "for someone who used to weigh over 300 pounds" hanging in the air.
The thing that I've realized is that I'm the one assuming that is how everyone sees me because it's how I see myself. For the people that have been along with me for this whole journey that's probably a fair assumption though. We have that shared perspective because they saw me at the beginning of this journey and know my whole back story. They can appreciate the small victories with me knowing what I know about where I started. That's actually a pretty cool connection to have.
I've gotten much more comfortable sharing my story with others and embracing the fact that I can inspire people by doing so. Over the last few years I've been open about so many of the things that I've struggled with and let people in on my triumphs. I got the opportunity to share the story of how I lost 100 pounds for our gym blog and to speak on the same topic in front of a group of 70 or so of my coworkers at a conference and the response has been both incredible and overwhelming. I'm truly touched by the number of people that reached out to thank me for sharing, who have congratulated me and wished me well, and who have said that I've inspired them to make a change in their life. Those moments make me not care that so many people see everything I do with the same filter as me.
A small piece of me though still clings to the little bits of normalcy I'm starting to experience. To days when there's nothing especially extraordinary about me just showing up and knocking out a workout and not finishing 10 or more minutes behind the rest of the class. To the times when I look around at the starting line of a race and I'm not the biggest person there. And to a time when someone I've known for over a year had no clue that I'd been in an accident until I brought it up.
The further I get down this road I realize that more and more people that I encounter won't know the me that was over 350 pounds or the me that broke both legs. Those are very important parts of my story, I'm not ashamed of either, but I know that they aren't the only things that define me. I'm not a victim. The scars of both will always be with me, but like any scar, I know more about them and am more acutely aware of them than anyone else.
Last month I ran in a 5K Color Run and internally I was stoked about how much I was able to run and thought a few times about how it wasn't long ago that I had to learn how to run again and couldn't make it around the gym parking lot. The cool moment for me though was not feeling like everyone else was looking at me as "fat girl running." And the even bigger win was not thinking of myself that way. Letting go of the victim mentality. I wasn't the fastest or the slowest. I was right there with everyone else, not really struggling, not in pain, just running. I was just another runner. Just an athlete.
