An Enzyme and a Marathon Gave Me Hope After My Assault

The morning after I was sexually assaulted, I went to class. Too anxious to sleep, too angry to think, I wanted to lose myself in neuroscience, the methodology of scientific review. My professor presented a paper on how trauma affects the brain. The parallel was not lost on me.

Traumatic stress disrupts chemistry and hormone levels, even changes the structure of different areas of the brain. Phrases like alterations in declarative memory and deficits in new learning—essentially, that I wouldn’t be able to learn new things or remember them properly—swam before my eyes. I blinked back tears while my professor and classmates discussed trauma in cerebral, hypothetical terms, unaware of me and my altered memory, giving thanks for my practiced poker face as I dutifully took notes on all the ways I was irreparable. The discussion ended with pessimistic data about the long-term outcomes of traumatic stress: dysfunctional relationships, increased unemployment, and suicide.

I had always loved learning, loved being a fountain of random trivia and knowledge, loved the ways in which my memories brought me comfort. The idea of being unable to learn was terrifying; the thought that my memory could freeze in the worst moment of my life, unthinkable. What if I became stuck in my trauma, my damaged brain rigid and unable to encode anything new? What if I became suicidal?

After class, I went for a run. My pace was off, my breathing erratic, my ancient iPod shuffle crackled and skipped, yet I could feel the tension leaving my body as I hurtled down the hill toward Central Park. Harlem Hill, once a nemesis and now a mentor, loomed. Struggling up the hill, I considered what I’d just learned about the effect of trauma and chronic stress on the brain. Could it be so definitive for me? I didn’t want it to be. I had always resented being told that I had no control over my body, and this was especially true after what had happened the night before.

As a mediocre cross-country runner in high school, I’d been told that I lacked the “right body” and the “genetic makeup” to be a real runner. I became hell-bent on training my body into what I wanted, not what was assumed to be achievable. It was the first time I chose potential over pessimism, and in the humid woods of Susquehanna, Maryland one August, my love of running long distances—the feeling of endurance; feeling my body shift and flex over the course of hours—took root. As I progressed from 5Ks to half-marathons to marathons and beyond, I realized the depth of meaning that distance running can have—it wasn’t only about the miles, but also the trust I developed in myself; the confidence I was able to cultivate for the first time.

After I was assaulted, that possibility of subverting the narrative I’d been fed became a beacon of hope. I decided to try to find a more complete scientific narrative about trauma instead of accepting damage as a foregone conclusion. For me, neuroscience, like running, is personal. The chemistry of the brain is not a dry and boring thing; it is the way I understand parts of myself I cannot see, experiences I have that I cannot yet explain. Neuroscience gives me access to myself in language and concepts, just as running gives me access to myself with wordless emotion and raw physical experience.

Alterations in declarative memory no longer felt set in stone. In science, there is rarely an undisputed conclusion to any complex phenomenon. If there was research out there that said I was damaged goods, there would be research that said I wasn’t. The mechanisms that cause chemical changes and disruptive influences in the brain could also create change and healing. The studies on trauma survivors who never recovered could also hold reports on the survivors who did. There is always more to the story—and there would be more to my story, too.

*

I turned my mind toward softer things: soil, new plants, water. My brain was a garden in the aftermath of a hurricane, strewn with debris and torn petals, flowers with their stalks bent and drooping, but with strong roots underneath the soil. I imagined a microscopic gardener wandering around, planting new neurons where patches had been ripped away. She would put on her gloves, tie back her hair, and wade through the wreckage with a spade and a packet of seeds, smoothing over the cracks in the earth, scattering the promise of new growth. She was the kind of gardener who would sing, who would believe that plants can hear us and respond to music. Land is a resilient thing; it can renew itself and recover from almost anything if you give it enough time.

This image was not just a whimsical flight of fancy. It was my metaphorical representation of the first scientific hope I clung to: increased neurogenesis. Neurogenesis, or the creation of new brain cells, is part of the continuing debate over how much our brains can change and grow after childhood. There are companies that advertise exercises to “prevent” memory loss and boost the brain’s ability to forge new connections. On the other hand, many subscribe to the theory that the brain is fully formed by the age of twenty-five, implying that there’s no more change possible after a highly flexible youth. The truth is more complicated than either explanation. It’s not true that all neurological changes are reversible, or that the brain remains malleable in the same way throughout life. In many instances, accepting change is the only way forward.

Neuroscience gives me access to myself in language and concepts, just as running gives me access to myself with raw physical experience.

There is no shame in knowing that some changes are final, or in accepting a new way of being. I am not the same as I was before. My trauma will impact me forever in some ways, and allowing that to be true was a core part of my healing. But the brain does keep making new cells after childhood, particularly in the area related to memory and learning called the hippocampus, and there are even factors that can speed up this process. One such factor is sustained exercise. The idea that my long runs could be helping to rebuild the parts of my brain injured by trauma helped calm my fears. That spring, I celebrated every new leaf I saw, imagining my hippocampus doing the same thing. I watched flowers learn to bloom again and decided that I, too, could come back to life.

None of this is how I was taught about the science of trauma. I was not given permission to imagine, to illustrate, to explore. I was taught to view conditions and experiences from a safe clinical distance, even if they represented me. In the classroom the day after the assault, I had been mortified to hear pain like mine treated as an academic exercise, furious that we were discussing trauma in such a detached and dehumanizing way. It would not undermine scientific inquiry to remember that research subjects were people long before they were projects—and that researchers are people, too, who carry their own experiences and traumas. Such an acknowledgment could strengthen these fields and help those researching and working in them. Instead, we often consider—and even encourage people to think of themselves—in reductive and harmful ways.

Neuroscience literature on trauma is filled with terms like “haunted” and “dysfunctional,” but only rarely “hope.” Yet we know that survival and recovery are possible. People survive the unthinkable every day. Hope can be a significant part of that survival, and it deserves space in conversations about trauma and its aftermath. So, after my own trauma, I gave hope the space it deserved. Once I decided I didn’t have to agree with the narrow way my life and brain had been portrayed in class, reviewing the scientific literature on this subject became a source of excitement, an intellectual challenge. And then I found the molecule that would become my lucky charm for years to come.

*

My apologies to Emily Dickinson, but hope does not have feathers—it has a series of overlapping bonds that allow electrons to move in countless ways. In chemistry, the ability of a molecule to shift its electrons into different arrangements makes it stronger and more stable; this ability is called resonance. In music, the phenomenon that occurs when a space amplifies sound—for instance, how singing inside a stairwell enhances the volume—is called acoustic resonance. In both cases, a feature has been magnified. It felt fitting that I would identify with a molecule that had the ability to fortify its own innate qualities as well as my own.

The molecule is named KAT, kynurenine aminotransferase, a ring of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagon with one nitrogen atom embedded in a corner. It is studded with other clusters of atoms sprouting off the sides, reaching out in all directions—like an oak tree, distilled to its atomic essence. The compound kynurenine causes inflammation in the brain and is responsible for many of the negative outcomes of chronic stress—meaning it’s a prime culprit in those deficits in new learning I had feared. KAT is the enzyme that breaks down kynurenine and prevents it from entering the brain. Sustained exercise causes the body to produce more.

The first time I saw a picture of the molecule, I cried. KAT was so elegant, so simple, so possible—a way back to myself. I scribbled the mechanism onto a Post-it note and ran with it in my pocket for months. It was my touchstone, the reminder of the physical healing taking place even if I couldn’t see it. If neurogenesis was a tiny gardener tenderly watering the sites of my healing, KAT was the guard dog preventing my flowers from being torn up again.

Best of all, because it was an enzyme, it was the chemical equivalent of immortal. Enzymes are compounds that help reactions happen faster, but they are not consumed in the process. They are not degraded; they endure. Like my garden after the hurricane. Like my legs after a marathon. Like me. This was exactly the narrative I needed. Science felt human, running felt fulfilling, and I felt less and less like the lead-tongued shadow of myself I had been in the classroom.

Understanding the chemical landscape of my brain—and the ways in which I can change it—makes me feel powerful.

In 2017, after graduating with a degree in neuroscience, I ran the New York City Marathon in the pouring rain, a race that holds a special place in my heart. The crowds at the base of the Queensboro bridge made my heart swell when I heard them cheering from a mile away. As I flew across the finish line, “Alive” by Sia was blasting from the same iPod shuffle I had used during that first run after my assault.

Sia’s voice breaks a little in the stripped-down pre-chorus when she says I’m still breathing; I listen to it when crossing every finish line, and that moment gets me every time. I’m alive—so very alive. I will be in some stage of healing from something—whether this trauma or another—for the rest of my life. Healing is not a simple, linear journey. But I will also be synthesizing my favorite enzyme, growing new neurons, with KAT guarding my garden and doing its job as I do mine.

Just as artists choose their medium, so I chose my method of survival. Endurance is a vast and varied thing, and distance running is just one way to embody it. I charge up Harlem Hill in the pre-dawn half-light to remind myself how strong I am because I decided to be. My assault once made me feel like a stranger in my own body; the emotional aftermath made me feel like a stranger in my own mind. Understanding the chemical landscape of my brain—and the ways in which I can change it and work toward my own healing—makes me feel powerful. And running lets me find my way—not back to who I was before my trauma, but forward to who I can be now. Neuroscience and running allow me to claim agency over my body, my story, and my life, constantly shifting and bringing me greater strength and stability. And the hope, as always, is what resonates.

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