I loved running as a way to work out. I loved how it gave me an ideal body—not a billboard body, not Brad Pitt in Fight Club, not carved for the gaze—but a body that felt earned, explained, and defensible. Running made me feel confident in how I looked naked, in the quiet honesty of a mirror that did not ask questions so much as confirm effort. It gave me a vocabulary for health: heart rate, breath, sweat, distance. It gave me proof I could point to and say, See? I am disciplined. I am attractive. I am strong. Running let me believe my body was not an accident but a project, one I showed up for each morning, lacing my shoes like an oath small enough to keep.

At first, that seemed like enough. Confidence, I thought, was cumulative. You gather it mile by mile, muscle by muscle, until it spills over into other parts of your life. I believed if I could run far enough, long enough, with enough consistency, love would recognize me. That confidence would become visible, like steam rising off my skin. I thought I was training not just my legs but my future: a stronger heart, a steadier gaze, a body that knew how to stay when things burned. I thought love would see the miles and understand the work. And about love, both require devotion without guarantee. Both ask you to show up on days when motivation is gone and all that remains is habit. You learn to listen closely to your body, to its aches and warnings, the way you learn to read the small shifts in someone else’s voice. You pace yourself. You learn that going too fast at the beginning can cost you everything later, that endurance is not about speed but about patience, about knowing when to push and when to ease back. Running teaches you how to breathe through discomfort, how to stay present when every instinct says stop. Loving asks the same.

The work looks similar, too. The repetition. The quiet, unglamorous hours no one applauds. The way progress is almost invisible day to day, yet undeniable over time. You invest in shoes, in time, in recovery, the same way you invest in words, in touch, in learning how to repair what you’ve strained. You accept that soreness is not failure but evidence of effort. That tenderness means something has been used. Running taught me that love, like distance, is not conquered but negotiated daily. But somewhere along the route, something shifted. I am too tired now. Too thin. Too slow. My body feels less like a project and more like a question I don’t know how to answer. The mirror has stopped confirming anything; it only reflects persistence without clarity. I no longer know if I am devotedly running toward something or apologetically running away from it. The miles blur together. The reason I lace my shoes feels harder to name. I still run, but I don’t always know why. There are days when running feels like proof I cannot stop, even when stopping might be kindness. Days when I wonder if I learned endurance at the cost of rest, discipline at the cost of listening. Loving was supposed to arrive as a reward, a finish line I could cross with my hands on my knees, breathless and smiling. Instead, love became another long stretch of road, another place where effort did not guarantee arrival. I trained my body to keep going, but I never trained my heart to ask where it was headed.

Still, I run. I run through doubt the way I once ran through confidence. I run through mornings that feel hollow and evenings that feel unfinished. I run because my body remembers even when my mind hesitates. Because movement has become a language I speak fluently, even when I have nothing to say. Some have suggested, Maybe you are not running toward love anymore. Maybe you are not running away from it either. Maybe I am just running, suspended in the act, slowly learning that devotion without direction can exhaust you, but stopping without understanding can undo you.

So I keep my pace. I listen. I let the road be what it is. I let my body be tired without calling it weak. I let myself be unsure without quitting. The season in which you keep going not because you are certain, but because you are still here, still breathing, still willing to place one foot in front of the other and trust that meaning might meet you somewhere along the way—that is how I commit.