I huddle in the cold leather seat, knees pulled up tight into my chest, listening to a cheap beat blasting through a cheaper headphone tucked into my left ear. I pull a water bottle up to my lips, but as soon as I feel the cool liquid sliding down my throat I regret the move. The stream disrupts the swarm of butterflies nesting in my stomach and they alight with fury.
The trip is long, over an hour. My legs are numb by the time the bus rolls to a stop. The windows are fogged, but I can make out bright colored tarps and tents spread out across a massive field of grass like monopoly homes on the game board. The butterflies are racing now, completing circuit after circuit in my gut.
I can never remember the minutes leading up to racing. Sometimes when the fear is so powerful, the mind chooses to forget. Vague memories of warming up, putting on flats, pulling off warm-ups are all a jumble, especially today.
The clarity begins when we toe the line. I’m pale, dizzy, about to pass out from nerves. Sweat is dripping down my brow and leaving a salty residue on my lips. My legs feel like bricks, my arms like putty. We put our hands together in the circle, pooling all the energy we have into one explosive scream. We yell like savages, the behavior is primal. I shout the loudest, desperately trying to release all my fears, worries and expectations in a single roar.
The pistol cracks. I throw my arms back and begin to race for the top of the grassy knoll. I hear stumbling, cheering, yelling, clapping. Loudest of all is my own heartbeat, amplifying in tune to the rapid cycling of my legs. I take about two minutes to settle in, my mind in step with my legs, my lungs on pace with my heart.
Fifteen odd minutes pass, running through mud, sand, over hills, around trees, across a section of gravel. There’s a wedding going on in the park. I smile. Imagine hundreds of sweaty, uninvited guests at your reception.
We finish. Everyone is devoid of energy, teeming with emotion. Clutching a popsicle place-stick in my fist with a vice grip like it’s some sort of sacred family heirloom I stumble through the finish ropes. My coach pats me on the back. Heavy breathing is a substitute for speech, saying more then words ever could.
I’m racked by emotion. Teardrops shed in relief mingle with sweat as I brush my matted hair out of my eyes with unsteady fingers. I’m unsure of what to think, but the swell of accomplishment is slowly rising in my chest. I ran, and I ran well.
The awards ceremony is a few hours later. We receive a medal for our third place finish as a team. Touching that medal brings back all the emotions, giving me goosebumps and turning my stomach inside out.
It is the nature of joy and despair to conjure up powerful emotions, elicit sharp details, and consume the mind with a solitary experience. This is evident from the incredible detail with which I can recall an event that took place almost three years ago.
There’s a possibility that some have never experienced true joy. Once you have, it serves as a benchmark for all future experiences. Small elations pale in comparison to the true joy that you once experienced. None of my victories and medals to this day have ever made as much of an impact as that first one. It is a visible memory of a time when I conquered some of my deepest fears. The depth of these fears helped produce the strength of the emotion.
Joy is not fleeting, it lingers. I am still able to place myself into the same frame of mind that I was in when it happened. True joy is an emotion unrivaled by any other. It’s identifiable when one is actually experiencing it, versus other emotions that only become apparent significant moments of time later. It’s an emotional snapshot, and continues to be a source of inspiration for me. If there’s ever a moment that can so clearly shape the future, it is a moment of pure joy or despair. At times when I feel emotionally drained, after a long day, a crushing defeat, a bad grade, I know that I can grab the medal and turn my mentality around. It’s reassuring to have that kind of power locked up inside a tangible object.