running up that hill

I used to run. I didn’t run to get in shape or stay in shape or for any physical health benefit. I ran because I needed somewhere to go. I needed forward momentum, to feel like I was pushing toward something instead staying stagnant. The fact that I ran down winding roads that took me back to my front door didn’t matter. For the moment, I was moving. For the half hour or so that my body could tolerate running, I was alone. It was me, my thoughts, my music, the pavement.

Things were bad. Things had been bad in my life before, but this was a different kind of bad because everything had been so good, so perfectly storybook before. Life descended into a bleakness so quickly I didn’t have time to process what was happening. There was a happiness in my world I had never felt before and then it was gone, replaced by a sense of despair, a feeling that everything had slipped from my hands just as I was learning to hold it tight. I cried a lot.

I started walking. Putting on my headphones and taking a walk around the block seemed like a good way to dissipate the negative adrenaline that my body was making. This wasn’t an adrenaline that made me feel like I could take on the world; it was a buzz of sorts, a low key humming that coursed through my body and caused my hands to shake and my thoughts to teeter toward destruction. I needed to kill this energy before it killed me. So I walked. I walked slow at first, looking at all the houses I was passing, wondering if the people inside those homes were happy or if their perfectly manicured lawns and gardens were…