Confession: I run around like a crazy person.

Running saved my life.

No, this is not one of those Biggest Loser-type stories. I didn’t start running to get in shape and lose roughly the weight of a baby whale. I was already in great shape when I re-discovered running. Since giving birth to my second child, I’ve stayed a hard-bodied size 0 by working out at least 4 days a week—at 4 am!—consistently. I lift, stretch, do cardio, take classes. In general, I kick my little ass into shape so that it stays, well…little!

I don’t run for the great cardio. I don’t run to be slender. I don’t run because I love logging endless miles to nowhere on the treadmill at o- dark-fucking-hundred while trying to keep my iPod earbuds in my ear (I must have de-formed ears because the stupid earbuds fall out constantly). Nor do I run because I enjoy having the old men who line up on the stationary bikes behind me ogle my ass as I hit mile 3.

I run because it keeps me from being crazy.

And, as those of you who know me are well aware, I can be pretty damn crazy. Stuart warns me—and then disappears-- when I’m veering down Loony Lane. John has risked life and limb to tell me-on several occasions!-than I’m koo-koo. And Caryn, Brook and my other girlfriends are friends enough to tell me when my ass looks fat, my hair falls flat and my behavior gets too psycho.


Don’t cue the Psycho shower scene or anything here. I’m not live-alone-in-the-woods-and-make-bombs crazy. Nor am I wander-the-streets-at-night-singing-show-tunes crazy. I don’t have a scab collection—or a creepy porcelain doll collection for that matter. I don’t hear voices, I don’t believe in voo-doo and I don’t see dead people. After all, I’m a psychology major and an Intro to Psych teacher; I KNOW that kind of crazy and I know for certain that I’m not it. It’s not a well-known fact, but all psychology majors have to take all of the crazy-factor tests…I have tested positive for Type-A, neurotic perfectionist with Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies, but there isn’t any certifiable insanity in my mental make up.


I just have a lot of drama. And most of that drama is invented in my head.


It goes like this: in the course of my day, I text someone. They, for whatever reason, don’t text me back within what I consider a reasonable amount of time (basically, by the time my cell-phone goes dark). I start to wonder why. Did I offend them? Are they mad at me? Do they now hate me? Never want to see me again? Are they, 7th-grade-girl-style, sitting with all of our other friends talking smack about me? The longer it takes for them to text/call me back, the more I start to wonder and doubt.


And as I wonder and doubt, I sink into a funk. A nobody-likes-me, everybody-hates-me, guess-I’ll-go-eat-worms funk. The worst part is, the entire time I’m feeling sad and unloved, the rational part of my brain (yes, John, I do have one!) is telling me I’m being crazy. The rest of me—my Id for those fellow psych lovers out there—doesn’t really care and is certain that everyone hates me, is actively avoiding me and never wants to see me again.


This is stupid. It is irrational, annoying and unproductive. It turns my naturally positive, self-confident, kick-ass bitch of a self into a whiney, clingy, insecure, flat-chested 12-year-old girl.


I have, over the years, tried many things to stop the crazy. Therapy doesn’t help; I’m an amazingly great liar, even to my therapist. Group therapy is worse as I’m super-competitive, and so putting me in a situation where I feel compelled to compete to be Most Crazy is fairly counter-productive. I’ve read self-help books until I can spout inanities with the best day-time ‘therapists’.


The one that works best is not eating, but this is, of course, a horrible idea. The twisted Kate-logic says that, since I can’t control anything else around me, I can at least control what I eat. And no one has self-control like a functional anorexic. Not saying this is good; it’s stupid and self-destructive and wrong, but for 15 years it was my insane method of controlling my crazy.


Until I had daughters. Or rather, until my daughters were old enough to notice that sometimes Mommy doesn’t eat. Until my girlfriends all noticed and commented that I don’t eat. Until my husband caught on that weeks pass wherein I don’t eat. Yes, even amazing liars like me eventually, after 15 some-odd years, get caught. So I started eating.


Great. This helped the low-blood-sugar issues: I no longer get dizzy every time I stand up and lord knows I’m a lot less cranky. Problem is, I was still kinda koo-koo.


Until the day I accidentally bought running shoes from the janitor.


Stuart has always been a runner. He’s built like one: tall and lanky with legs that, if he shaved them and put on some pantyhose, would get him on the Rockettes’ kick line in a heartbeat. Currently, he’s training with his buddies for a half marathon. This means, among other things, that he needs new running shoes about every three months.


One afternoon, we wandered into Big Five to buy him a new pair of shoes and it was Bob, my favorite school janitor, who came over to help us. Before he retired, Bob and I were tight. We bonded over being the only Seahawks fans in Nevada (this is long before the Seahawks had even brief flashes of victory…we’re talking the 1-10 years) and the fact that Bob was always happy to kill the field mice who lived under my desk. When he retired, I lost track of Bob but missed our hallway chats.


So, in the course of catching up—and sharing our mutual disgust with all of the suddenly-Seahawks fans who have sprouted up in the recent years—Bob made a sales’ pitch to get me to buy some running shoes. I was due for a new pair of exercise shoes anyway, although I usually get cross-trainers since my cardio preferences are pretty varied. But a combination of nostalgia and a strong desire to exit the store before Jennifer knocked anything over prompted me to buy some expensive running shoes, at a ‘friend of employee’ discount instead.


The next morning at the gym I stared at the line of treadmills and thought: what the hell. Guess I could actually use these bad boys for running.


I hate running. Strange, really, since I’m a State Champion—for 3 years in a row!—track star with the Glory Days medals and still-unbroken school records to prove it. But I was a sprinter. And even back then, at the fast-and-nubile age of 16, I hated to run more than 400 meters. In fact, I think the fact that I hated running is one of the reasons I was so fucking fast: I was determined to get it over with as quickly as possible.


Since leaving the track, I’ve used various excuses as to why I work out religiously but don’t run: My ACL surgery prevents it. My asthma prevents it. My religion prevents it.


But for whatever reason, that morning I climbed on the treadmill and started to run.


God, it sucked! My ankles hurt. My stupid ACL-repaired knee hurt. My back hurt, my lungs hurt and even my right ear—where I kept having to jam the earbud back in—hurt. Somehow, I trudged through a mile at an embarrassing 12-minute pace. At one point, as I fixed the damn earbud for the millionth time, I nearly fell off (I can’t think, run and fix all at once and had to do one of those stumble-trip-grab maneuvers to avoid flying off the back of the treadmill). As soon as I hit one mile, I stopped, bent over at the waist, gasped for breath and swore that I’d never do THAT again.


And then something weird happened: I felt great. I felt loose and limber and energized. I felt sweaty and strong. And I felt…happy.


This feeling lasted all day. Caryn didn’t smile at me when I passed her in the hall that morning and I didn’t care. Brook took her customary 4 hours to text a response and I never once worried about it. Dance Mom Bitch was, well, a bitch and I just grinned at her. Never once during the day did I wonder if Person X liked me, if I’d offended Person Y, if Person Z now thought I was ugly and if Person Husband still loved me.


In short, running chased the crazies away.


The next day I ran 1.5 miles. It still sucked. It still hurt. It still kept the crazies away.


So now I run. Not every day. 3-4 times a week does the trick. I don’t run super-far, although the distance does increase as I regain the ground-eating, zen-inducing stride that I thought I had lost along with my teenage thighs, preference for blue eye shadow, and love of all things Madonna. But, if I go more than 2 days, I start to notice the crazies creeping back in. I start wondering if people like me, I start acting clingy. I stop eating.


And then, as soon as I run again, I’m fine.


I’m so addicted that today I did something to keep the crazies away that many others would define as crazy. I ran 3.5 miles on a sprained ankle. Sure it hurt. Sure, I ran funny (Caryn was running next to me and kept telling me to stop because I was limping so badly). But I HAD to run. It’d been 4 days and, like a thick, insidious fog, I could feel the crazies seeping in. So I sucked it up like any good athlete does and played—ran—hurt.


And then, as I limped through the rest of my day, I was happy and positive and carefree.


This is why I run. I run for my girls. I run for my husband. I run for my students and my friends and the people who have to interact with me for any reason. I run for my health and I run for my sanity and I run for my SELF.


I run for my life.