I saw an ad for a Wonder Woman run with a puffy blue jacket the participants get for running. It had the WW logo on it and I wanted it. “I could be a runner!” I thought to myself, before remembering that I am not a runner.
I’ve tried running multiple times in my life, always for fitness, never for pleasure. Still, I hold out for the experience of the runner’s high. All I ever get is a red face, a lot of sweat, sore shins. The image of myself as a runner persists, somehow.
The first time I gave up running was right after my brother had seen me running and told me he never knew I was a runner. Me neither, cause I’m not, I thought to myself. What I said out loud was something like, “why not? Anyone can run.” He took up running shortly after and just as quickly stopped. Our genetics bringing us closer than ever, two people who love an idea of ourselves but finally accept who we are.
It seems I only ever discover myself through what I am not. I am not a runner. I am not a veterinarian, a slam performance poet, or a finance person. I am not a Californian.
Perhaps I am a memoirist. That is my current attempt. May we always be attempting to discover who we are, even if it’s by discovering who we are not.
Sunday Dutro, Author - Official Site 
I’ve never been a runner either. I am a walker though. And a writer, a dreamer, a wife, a stepmother, a friend. I am finding that for everything I am not, I also figure out who I am.
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I’d like to be a walker. I’m currently not anything active and it’s got me out of balance. I too am a writer, but whether it’s a vocation or a hobby has yet to be seen. I, too, am a dreamer and a wife and a friend. I’m also a daughter and an aunt and a cousin. I’m wishing there were more “I am”‘s but for some of us, maybe, they are only found through “I am not”‘s, and maybe only at the same ratio of rejections to acceptances (10:100)…an interesting and slightly wobbly-knee-making possibility.
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