Vachon Imagined

Every morning for three weeks at 0530 (which is 5:30 a.m. for you lowly civilians), my drill sergeant would make me run sprints. Every afternoon, the same thing.

I ran until I puked. I ran until my legs came out from under me and I toppled over like one of those runway models who trip over their own heels—a baby giraffe learning to walk.

And why?

Because I had been selected as the female who would represent my battalion at the Best Warrior Competition, which meant I would compete against females from other brigades.

Now, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I will.

I was dynamite at push-ups and sit-ups. I could take on the men in those two events, and most of them I beat. Those were my events. I owned those events.

But the run?

Come on now.

With these legs?

I was doing good to run two miles in under 14 minutes, and in basic training I had won top place for PT in my battalion, which meant I had scored the highest PT score of anyone else.

I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then I got to my individual training.

And apparently, God had decided I needed some humility.

Because the competition got harder.

There was one female who, when she walked into training, we would all just kind of step aside. Nobody said anything. We didn’t have to. We could communicate fear quite efficiently without using words.

Of course, on the inside, no one was going to know how much we feared her.

Please.

With this ego?

Not happening.

But I knew she was better than me in the run.

So every morning I ran sprints until I puked.

I would get to my breaking point and tell my DS I couldn’t do anymore. It was as though I had never spoken.

He would say, “Start over. Go back.”

And, well, I did, because I like not being dishonorably discharged. I prefer that not be on my record.

I like to eat.

I like having a roof over my head.

And I particularly enjoy being able to provide for myself.

So back to the line I went.

But I hated it.

I hated the training. I hated getting up in the morning. I hated running. I hated the fact that my drill sergeant seemed to have some personal vendetta against my lungs.

But every time I broke my previous time because of the work I had put in, I was learning something I didn’t know I was learning.

I was learning about barriers.

Self-imposed barriers.

And what we do when we fear ourselves.

We have a tendency to blame. We look out into the world and say things about “others.” We blame the person, the situation, the circumstance, the thing that is supposedly standing in our way.

But when you understand that you are the one experiencing the consciousness of what you claim is being done to you, something changes.

You stop scaring yourself.

And when you stop scaring yourself, you naturally stop being so afraid of other people.

You break through a barrier every time you recognize fear and surrender it for peace.

The more you do that, the more you walk in that peace.

Fear doesn’t live here.

No matter what people do, say, or judge you—because their judgment is ultimately a judgment of themselves—you live in this dwelling.

And you keep breaking through fear.

It happens incrementally.

It happens as we are revealed in our humanity, and in that humanity, the spirit of fear is released.

Now, I’m not going to make this story into some parable about me being a hero that day and everyone applauded me.

That didn’t happen the way I hoped.

That girl, you know, the one we all feared but our egos wouldn’t show it—she totally smoked me on the run by a minute.

And in the running world, that’s domination.

She didn’t just beat me. She made a very compelling argument that I should consider another career.

But here’s the thing:

When I get scared, that’s what I think of.

I didn’t shave enough time off my run to beat her.

But I shaved enough time off to get beyond a barrier.

And that is what we do every day when we take responsibility for our lives and love who we are, even when no one else is applauding us.