Hector M. Gomez

What are you looking for? What is it that drives you? For some, it’s love. For others, it’s success or recognition. But for me, it’s pain. Agony. Fire. That slow relentless burn that crawls beneath the skin, it reminds me I’m still alive. I don’t run from it; I chase it. Because in that fire, there’s truth. There’s motion. There’s something real. The more it burns, the more awake I become. I don’t long for comfort, I long for the spark that ignites transformation. That’s what I’m really searching for: not healing, not escape, but the kind of pain that strips away the surface and burns off all those fragile layers to show me who I really am.

I didn’t know I was searching for this until I had my first cross-country race that fall. New to the sport, I didn’t know what to expect. Running? What else could it be? That race changed my entire existence. I thought I could win and went straight to the front, with no prior racing experience; it was a ticking time bomb. A 5k is 3.1 miles, and by mile two, that bomb went off. Pain, pain, and more pain, I had never experienced anything like this before. Like seeing stars after hurting yourself, that’s what it felt like for the next mile. For the next eight minutes, I went somewhere deep within me I had never discovered.

“What are you doing here?” my consciousness asked. Dark. Red. Flames inside my body, that’s all I saw. Am I in hell? Unable to breathe, grasping for air. With every step I took, the more it burned, the closer I felt to literal death. Is this what I was looking for?

It’s at that very moment, when you’re closest to death, that nothing else matters. This pain breaks through your focus, demanding attention, making the world narrow and raw. You. That’s it. Your mind tells you to stop, your muscles ache, but your heart and soul want more. I knew I couldn’t stop, I had to finish no matter what. Those eight minutes felt like an hour; with every minute, a layer of my weakness burning off. Step by step, my eyes on fire, I would soon learn to control this newly discovered power.

I crossed the finish line and everything went dark. I opened my eyes, and everyone I cared for was around me. Like waking up from a hospital bed, I felt like I had just survived something no one survives. “Is this what you like doing? YOU ARE CRAZY! I CAN’T WATCH YOU LIKE THIS.” That was the first and last time my mother saw me race. But for me, it was just the beginning.

What was that? What had I just experienced? Like a drug addict, I needed more. I needed to go back.

Fast forward to now, I have learned to control this feeling. My body has increased its tolerance, and I need bigger doses to feel that way. Minutes have turned into seconds, as it’s not until the last 400 or 200 meters of a race that I enter the deepest part of myself. My soul turns into fire, and where once I didn’t know what was happening, now I know exactly where I’m at. The faster I go, the hotter it gets. “This is what I am looking for,” I tell myself. Can you handle it? I’m about to find out.