There was nothing more that I wanted to do than just to run away.
Or perhaps to just run, because running was something that I could actually wrap my head around. Running was the simple – relatively speaking – act of moving one’s legs in long strides in order to carry oneself somewhere.
Well, usually that’s what it was.
Right now a treadmill would be, at the very least, nice. At the very least. Right now I didn’t care if I had to run on a track in circles, as long as I would be able to feel the movement of air and that mock-feeling of going someplace would be preferable. Because it wasn’t as if there was actually anywhere to go in the first place. This place was so bloody small, it was amazing that there was even a circuit that I could take to go running at all.
The point was that there was nowhere else for me to go. No one seemed to want me around or anything, and it wasn’t as if I was going to hassle them with my damn presence if they were going to be so un-subtle about it in the first place. I didn’t want to be anyone’s burden. But at the same time, I wished that I could be – be someone’s something to worry the hell about. I wanted to snuggle up into bed and just disappear; but at the same time my own pride wouldn’t let me just give up the things I had worked hard on, even if it wasn’t really that much.
I was trapped between loving and hating my own damn mediocrity.
That was where the running came in. Running was simple, running was animalistic, running was freedom in the form of a pair of shoes. Not even. Running across sand was better – harder, required more effort and more balance and more self-awareness – but it was better, and especially in bare feet. It didn’t exactly help that I was landlocked now, but that didn’t matter. At the very least I had a pair of runners and a I had a makeshift track to run on, and so, like any other day when things were just going to shit, that was where I headed, running my way there, just so I could keep running there, in circles, in circles, in circles.
My heart thudding in my ears as I reached the track, which was really just a scarcely used, probably abandoned considering the state of the goalposts, old soccer field, I didn’t oblige my screaming muscles, or acknowledge the burning in my lower joints in my hips, knees, ankles. My feet were hot and sweaty and starting to get uncomfortable, but I ignored it all. My throat was dry, but despite the fact that there was water available in a bottle in the bag that I had dropped at the goalposts now on the far side of the field, I didn’t go for it. It was probably warm anyway.
It was just a feeling of falling, falling, falling, that had started in the base of my skull, worked its way down my neck, fixed itself into my throat, making it seize. From there it had slipped down to my stomach like ice, making me frozen at my core; giving me a feeling of nausea that didn’t quite amount to me actually vomiting – but enough to make me feel that stubborn finger that stabbed at me from the inside that made me feel weak even though I knew I wasn’t.
Except then it overcame me, and a stopped running, my legs buckling, slowing the pace of the run to a walk, til I finally just collapsed onto the ground, falling onto my knees, rolling over onto my back, laying spread-eagled on the dried gray grass like the victim of a drive-by shooting, staring at the sky as clouds lazily crawled through the bright azure abyss. I was going to pay for this later – like anything else in the world, the hard running of laps came at the price of sore, burning muscles the day after.
But damn, this felt good.
Adrenaline pumping, I let my heartbeat slow down a bit – let my breathing rate return to somewhat normal, and took a few more moments after this before I got up again. Thighs and calves already starting to ache in protest, I picked up the jog again before the clouds could catch up to me. Not the real ones – the ones that hovered over my head whenever I happened to stop. Things like school. Like work. Like balancing that, friends, family, and all the pressures and expectations that came along with all of those, too.
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