This past month I took a break from running the streets of Santa Barbara and headed out to my old neighborhood, the unincorporated community of Isla Vista. I moved there in 1998, my second year of college, and lived in rented apartments. When I recently joined a Facebook Group called, “I Partied in IV ’98-02,” I started to become nostalgic for that time in my life between youth and adulthood.
I first arrived in I.V. only a few months after my mother passed away from breast cancer, and since my father had died when I was 4 years old, I was feeling all alone in the world. The moment I unlocked my apartment door and stepped into that apartment, it hit me that my life was very adult. Too adult. I felt as though some grown-up should be with me, helping to unload my car and set up my bed. I was an SBCC student, but my roommates were all going to UCSB, which didn’t start until the following month, so I spent the next four weeks in the apartment alone.
This is when I discovered running. There used to be a huge field where the San Clemente Village now stands. I’d run around its circumference, blasting Alanis Morissette, trying to hold my Discman flat to keep it from skipping. At 18 I didn’t have the emotional tools to even recognize, let alone process, the trauma of losing my mother. Running helped me to pass the time and clear my head.