I started running 23 years ago. I was a broken person and discovered an unexpectedly simple truth: putting one foot in front of another, over and over and over, was the way to put myself back together.

In a family where masculinity, athleticism and physical strength were prized above all else, I was the shy, weak and uncoordinated girl. Dad was in the army, the bit of it they now call special, elite. Then, it was the bit of the army where the families didn’t get to live in Germany or Gibraltar. The bit of the army where only the dads went away. And they didn’t say where they’d been. When dad was home, much of his time was devoted to training, and we’d get dragged up hills and mountains and along to races to do a lot of waiting for it to be over. My older brother loved it and when he went to high school a year ahead of me, he shone in all the sports.

We like to think that school is the place we learn things. The place where grown-ups who aren’t in your family will recognise your potential, nurture your talents and set you on your path to success in Grown-up Land. But it’s not. Secondary school is the place where your weaknesses, your fatal flaws and your secrets, how ever deep you manage to hide them, will be found out, laid bare and held up for humiliation. And to the child who isn’t sporty, the school playing field is the prison yard where the searchlights will be trained down on you, and you will be caught.

Catching is one of the things I could not do. Or throwing, or hitting any type of ball, quoit or bean bag with any kind of bat. Or kicking. Or jumping, tumbling, hurdling or any of the awful combinations of skills in agility devised by sadists to let the thick big girls shine and the mousy readers squirm in line, waiting not to be picked. Too many times, in that grotesque parody of a beauty pageant, I won the prize. The last one picked and so the first to be picked on, as soon as the game was over and the real fun began back in the changing room. I hated PE. I did everything I could to get out of it. If I couldn’t get the day off to a feigned sickness, headache or pain, I’d forge the ‘get out of PE because of your period note’ that would work at least three weeks out of four. In fifth year, I opted for extra Latin to get out of PE. I was rubbish at Latin, but at least it was indoors. And it wasn’t PE.

I lived my twenties through the 90s. I went to university, started teaching and had three babies. I did absolutely no exercise, and the only regimes I committed to were smoking and an unsuitable man. Naturally, I didn’t see it like that then. Nor even, after thirteen years when he left for someone else. I loved him and he left me broken. It felt like someone had died.

I wanted to give up. I thought how easy it would be to just disappear under the duvet and drown myself in vodka. And, without the children, maybe I would have. I don’t know. I kept on working full time, got the kids to school and nursery, kept the house clean, shopped on a budget and made meals which I didn’t eat. I lived on black coffee, cigarettes, tea and vodka and I got very, very thin.

I could not sleep. Every waking hour was filled with loss and anger and pain. I had never known I was capable of so much rage. How could he do this to me? How could he leave me? How could he leave three kids? How could they walk away and be happy and leave me like this? I’d keep it together long enough to get the baby to bed and have nowhere to release all of that hurt except by pouring myself a large one and sooking down fag after furious fag.

One summer night, I sat out on the back step, wanting to howl it all out, but having to keep it in, to keep silent, not wake the baby. I stood and turned and saw my reflection in the glass door. My face, drawn, twisted in a silent scream and I started stepping up and down on the doorstep. Up, up, down, down. Over and over, pounding my feet harder and harder faster and faster until my face was scarlet, my lungs were screaming and I’d let the rage out of its cage. But after, I was calmer and just a tiny bit better.

It became a routine. Baby to bed. Running up and down on the back doorstep. This was 2002, there weren’t any smartphones or apps, but I started timing myself on my wristwatch. 3 minutes without stopping and coughing my guts up. 5 minutes. 7 minutes. 15. I started to wonder if I was running on the street, how far would I get? To the end of the road, for sure, maybe even round the block. These alien thoughts were very definitely not me, but for the first time I started to think that it would be okay to do something that was not me. I could do something.

There is almost nothing about being a single parent that is how you think it’s going to be. One of the most unexpected, is how different time is. I’d barely known any adult life that didn’t involve children. They started going to their dad’s every other weekend plus one night a week. At first, it was terrifying, bewildering. What do people without kids do? I decided, that maybe with all of this time, I could move my running off the back doorstep and out to the streets. At first, I chose times when no-one would see me. I felt embarrassed and inept. I thought if someone saw me it would be like it was back in school and I’d feel the same shame.

Every time I went out, I went a little further. If I could get three times round the block, I could start running round a bigger block. Step after step, I really did start to feel stronger. There was a pain in my lungs and an ache in my legs, but it was a good pain because it stopped me thinking about the painful things inside my head.

My first steps into running showed me something I didn’t know I had in me. It helped make me happy. It helped me face the things I was most scared of. And it helped me build a stronger me than the one that was broken.

I’m a bit broken again. My mother has died.

And the truth, the truth I didn’t want to face when I started my manic running up and down on the doorstep, is that it wasn’t just the rage at that man and what he had done to me. It was fear. It was the sheer bloody terror of becoming like my mum. A mother whose husband left her for another woman. A woman left on her own with three children. A broken woman who fixed herself with cigarettes and alcohol. A mother that ran away and left her children behind.

I don’t know how to deal with this loss. I’m not even sure I know what it is I need to fix. Losing love was different. It was torture to look back, destructive to dwell on the present and running was the perfect medicine- I moved forward and I started to become a stronger me. I moved on and found self-reliance, love and joy.

Running on its own is not going to make this right. I do have to go back and try and fix that broken child. I have to look into the darkest corners of myself and face the truths I have avoided all this time.

But this time, I already know how to run. This time, I’m going to use the power that running gives me to look back without getting lost. I’m putting on my running shoes and I’m taking my first step.