Sunday was supposed to be my eighth marathon.

But it just wasn’t in the cards for me. This was not my year for running 26.2—I just couldn’t get into the shape I wanted to in time.

My New York City Marathon FOMO was HIGH. Everything marathon was making me tear up this weekend—it’s my favorite day.

So I decided to do something for myself—run a local 5K. A Better World Running runs small races along the beach path. Sometimes it feels like a waste of money to pay to run on the path I run every day, but sometimes it’s also just fun to pin a race bib on and run with a bunch of people. I’ve run a 15K and a 5K (no recap) with them, and for what it is, they put on a good race.

My friend Carolyn and I were texting back and forth about NYCM FOMO, and I managed to rope her into this with me!

The start is about half a mile away from me, so I jogged over to warm up and had a good feeling even warming up. I rolled up at 7:10 to pick up my bib for a 7:20 race—love me a good local race.

When I ran the Manhattan Beach 10K a few weeks ago, I had some Vega Pre-Workout Energizer (my digestive system does not tolerate coffee before running) and used my inhaler (my lungs don’t love LA air, especially during fire season), and I felt really strong, so I did the same before this race. (That part was more for me than you, to remember.)

We hadn’t talked about it, but I hoped Carolyn and I would run together. I’m physically getting stronger, and I’m mentally getting so much stronger in the rest of my life, but I’m still kind of struggling mentally with running. I’m less likely to want to stop if I’m running with someone else.

But Carolyn and I started together and ran the whole thing together! The race route is simple—it just goes 1.5 miles up the beach path and turns around. The first mile felt great. We talked intermittently—the pace wasn’t super easy for either of us, but it was still OK enough to talk sometimes.

It felt interminable to get to the turnaround mark, but I still felt strong physically, just a little bored. But before I knew it, we were turning around WOO HOO.

The downside to a race running on the path you’re on every day is that you know exactly how long it is to the finish, and I was just waiting to run south past the pier to know we were almost done. We were just north of the pier when I realized I hadn’t looked at my watch once—and didn’t WANT to. I knew I was running faster than I usually did and I didn’t want to psyche myself out. I said this to Carolyn and she agreed.

I hate the new Activity app in iOS 13, because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to look back to see the splits from a few days ago, but we finished in 28:59, a 9:20 pace. I’m a long way from where I used to be, for sure, but I’m feeling stronger and that’s what’s important to me right now.

This is a post that’s been whirling around my head since I was in treatment.

For the first 36 years of my life, I was playing the role of myself—I was not myself. I was who I thought my family wanted me to be. Who I thought friends wanted me to be. Who I thought society wanted me to be. Who I thought you, reading this, wanted me to be.

I was so afraid that the real me wouldn’t be accepted by anyone. I read criticism about myself and tried to write so that anyone reading would like me.

One, you’re never going to be liked by everyone. (You’re not a taco.)

Two, if you’re trying to be liked by everyone, you probably don’t like yourself.

And I didn’t like myself for quite some time. It’s still a process.

I diminished anything I ever accomplished. I downplayed this blog, ashamed of it, even though I once had a decent following. I have less of a following than I used to because I became so afraid to show myself, especially as I became depressed—and it just became a vicious cycle.

Fear of others’ opinions caused me to live a small life, contorting to be who I thought I should be. Regrets, I have a few…

I wish I hadn’t held myself back with all those self-limiting thoughts.

Recently, I heard Kate Speer, CEO of The Dogist on this podcast episode. “If I don’t show the full me,” she said, “then you’re not liking me for me—you’re liking what I project.”

So, sure, this is social media—I’ll never be sharing all of myself online, none of us do. But I’m working on showing up more authentically both online and IRL as my full self.

My full self can be really freaking intense. And I have a sense of humor that vacillates between incredibly dry and incredibly immature. I have never met a “that’s what she said” joke I didn’t like. My full self may come off as standoffish, because I’m so afraid to say the wrong thing, and I’m really uncomfortable receiving heartfelt compliments. (I’m excellent at accepting compliments about superficial things…like my hair. I’ll accept that compliment happily for days.)

My full self also has a ginormous heart. Once I let you into my life, I let you all the way in. You are part of my family. I feel things incredibly deeply, for better or worse. I want you to feel included. I want to connect everyone (at my mom’s wake, I was so insistent on making sure all my friends met each other).

The first time I tried out California last fall, I didn’t move here at first because I was afraid of what people in my life would say. Once my treatment therapist and I worked on me living for myself, I was ready to step into my own life.

I may be embarking on another big life transition soon, and I’ve been scared what you’ll think. What people in my life will think. But at the end of the day, it’s my life and something I think that will change it in a really meaningful way for me.

To paraphrase Ms. Brene Brown, I’m letting go of who I think I’m supposed to embrace who I am. I deserve to. (And so do you.) Take it or leave it. Maybe this new Theodora isn’t for you. That’s fine.

What’s something about yourself you haven’t embraced yet and how can you start to embrace it?