Girl on the Run

May 31, 2026

Yesterday was amazing from start to finish, but I have been a girl on the run for daysssss. I spent the week prepping for a fancy black tie event I got tapped to attend for work. And by tapped, I mean my boss couldn’t go, so who better to fill a spot at a table than Rebecca. I asked ChatGPT to help me craft a perfect makeup glam look based on a photo of my poofy pink dress and it made me a list of products to buy and even created a little diagram exhibiting the perfect eyeshadow technique based on the “That’s Taupe” eyeshadow palette that the AI chose for me. I haven’t been to an event like this since I went to the Marine Corps ball in 2019, and what I forgot about looking like a princess is that it requires running a lot of errands. I left work a little early on Friday to get my nails done and the sweet lady who did them talked me into a pedicure. I went to Ulta and the shoe store, and then came home to baby my face in hopes that it would be smooth and blemish free on Saturday morning. When I woke up on Saturday, I went to the DryBar and let a nice woman in yellow pants wash, blow dry, and curl my hair. I dropped my doggie off at her hotel. I ran home to make some tacos. Then I made my way to DC to check into the hotel room that Deloitte booked for me, and felt very fancy when I pulled up to the valet parking and told the guy “just charge it to my room.”

I followed the ChatGPT makeup routine in my hotel room (and I had to start over on the eye shadow twice and still didn’t quite get it right). But when I went through all the other steps that the grifty influencer “Mikayla” showed me on Facebook, things came together quite nicely. I took some selfies for the inevitable fucking dating profile I will have to make some day in the next few months, and chugged a sour beer in the room before I took a deep breath and rode the elevator down to the event on the ground floor.

Here’s what the event had in store for me:

1. Open Bar reception – there was a reception from 6-8 pm which included all-you-can-drink, mingling with people from various companies and government agencies, and ice sculptures for the sponsoring companies. I wandered around like an idiot in my big pink dress trying to think of some smooth way to insert myself into a conversation but eventually I found a small group of Deloitte people. They must have recognized me from my Teams photo at work because this was my first time meeting most of them in person. I was drinking vodka cranberry because I am hashtag not like other girls, and one guy I’ve worked with a ton over the last year told me to order a “Rose Kennedy”. This is apparently a vodka cranberry with a splash of club soda. I had 4 of them, and not a single bartender I asked knew what the fuck a Rose Kennedy was.
2. Terrible dinner – okay, so we are all drinking our asses off and eating tiny appetizers for two hours and by the time everyone is good and sloshed, it’s time for dinner. The lady who was hosting the event was so mad that no one would sit down and stfu long enough for her to give her opening remarks, but also, we were all very drunk. The salad was good and came with some sort of almond brittle that was divine, but I went for the rolls first (thanks, Rose Kennedy). The main course was one of the worst New York strip steaks I’ve ever had and I swear they put A1 steak sauce all over it. We also had lobster tail. Now, I’ve never had a lobster tail before and I told this to my new buddy who was wearing shiny Air Jordans with his tuxedo. He tasted his own lobster tail and advised me to sit it out and save my first time for one that was well-cooked. Dessert was mediocre cheesecake. The purpose of the dinner was an award ceremony for one man who had a really impressive career as a public servant – but once again, I must remind you that we were all so drunk, I don’t think anyone in that room could recap his acceptance speech today.
3. After party – more open bar. 2 more Rose Kennedys. Once the other Deloitte people started talking about door dashing tacos, I did an Irish exit and stumbled back up to my room.

It was so much fun to get dressed up and feel pretty and spend an evening living this magic, lavish life where the drinks pour all night and everyone looks like they just stepped out of the ballroom on the Titanic (pre-iceburg). I woke up in my beautiful hotel room at 5:30 with the sun beaming in and thanked 2 am Rebecca for puking up a good amount of the booze and chugging two bottles of water. And with that, my evening of painting my face and painting the town was over and I got to take my 4Runner back to my puppy and my house and my regular lonely life.

I made the mistake of keeping some of my ex’s family and friends on my social media, and when I got home today, I saw a story where my former-pseudo-step-daughter “L” had run a 5k this morning. It was the Girls On the Run (GOTR) 5k that I signed her up for in March. We were on our way home from an Arizona trip and I got a notification from the school that they doing GOTR and we signed L up right away. This ended up being a risky decision because L was not happy when we told her – she couldn’t understand why we would sign her up for something without asking her. She said only the weird kids would sign up. She softened a bit when she was able to convince her friend to sign up with her and started going to practice twice a week. This felt like such a win – to get her out of the house after school, hanging out with kids her age outside of school. And I used to coach GOTR, so I was really looking forward to being her buddy for the 5k that would happen at the end of the season. Lord knows I needed a good reason to start running again and she was it.

Anyway, now it’s May and the 5k in question was today. I had forgotten all about it with the stress and running around trying to make sure I didn’t look like a country rube at the black tie event. But boy did I have the mental real estate to think about it today. L’s aunt made a really nice Facebook story about being proud of L for running her first 5k, and had this beautiful picture of L running with the biggest smile. Then there was a picture of L’s tiny cousins holding up signs that said “Go sparkle farts!” or something like that. And then the last slide of the story was a family photo of everyone who came out to support L. Talk about a bitter-sweet moment for me. It was sweet because I felt so proud of her too – proud of her for doing something she wasn’t excited about and seeing it through, proud of her for leaning into this talent of running that she and I discovered on a cold day in January. I was proud of the family for showing up for her and encouraging her. But the moment was also bitter because the original plan was for me to be part of it. I was supposed to be beside her on that run and in those photos and now, that’s not my role. I’m just another “friend” on Facebook who gets to send a “like” and go on with my day. And by “go on with my day”, I mean have a total fucking meltdown.

There’s such a striking difference between the high I was riding yesterday where I felt like a beautiful, polished, boss-babe baddie and today where I’ve spent most of the day in bed crying over how much this hurts and how all the hurt is coming from a choice that I made myself. I’m the one who left. And now I’m the one who is left out, and I’m crying over it. I know that doesn’t make much sense. It’s not that I have regrets – I know I made the right choice and that this is just the way it has to be. But I’m the one who is alone. I’m not in the family picture because I’m not in the family. I won’t be getting a text later from L with an update, because I’m not her family anymore. That’s hard. And I can’t just hop in the car and go to my sister’s house to take my mind off of it and snuggle my niece and nephew- I have to sit here alone while the family I had for a second and the people I came to love go on without me. I am no dummy, I knew they were doing fine without me (obviously, I’m not *that* narcissistic), but it’s different to see it right there on my iPhone in full color.

I guess the part of yesterday that was so much fun is that I got to be the girl on the run for a day. I got to step into a new persona or identity and live in a different place that had no memories or baggage, and I spent an evening with brand new people. I was running around from one luxury to the next, drink one to drink two, and so on. The second I stopped running for a second, the reality that grief is not a linear process just caught up with me. I know there will be more days like this and that’s hard to fathom – but maybe there will be more days like yesterday too? I guess that’s the hope I have to hold onto – that I’m running toward something incredible, instead of away from something that was also incredible in so many ways.