I like to run. Literally, metaphorically. I like the illusion of going somewhere and the reality of going nowhere.
I’ve been running away since early adolescence. My soul can breathe with even just the idea of distance. I feel the most free. I can think and say and feel the silence. There are no expectations of me. I don’t need to be anything. Being somewhere isn’t a concern.
The emptiness fills me with potential. I wonder who else I can be. I don’t care about where I’m going or actually becoming that person. My imagination is enough. When I run, my body loosens, my spirit sings and rejoices. I notice everything. I can listen and hear.
The idea of a clean slate, reinventing myself but staying the same. I need to believe that I can get away. I need to know I’m not trapped. That I can disappear and come back on my own time, when I’m ready. Throw myself to the wind any time I like. That I am a free woman, that I belong to me. That I’m not bound to the words used to describe me, to who I was in familiar places. I am constantly changing.
I want to be unpredictable. I want people to wonder and experience irritation with me. I get off on revealing their own insecurities. I find it pleasurable to be irresponsible. I look back fondly on the times when I didn’t care about anything but what I wanted to care about. I had no obligations. There’s a freedom in not caring about approval or being understood.
Who do I think I am? She doesn’t belong here.
I want to leave them. I want curiosity more than I want to be known. I love feeling me, being the most familiar, the most connected. Being alone and in myself. Society doesn’t compliment me like solitude does.
I like to run and feel my body, to feel my power, my fight. It reminds me that I can survive if I wanted to. That I can betray myself if I wanted to. I can conquer myself if I want to. Be my own master.
Maybe I need to know that I can get away.
I’m not in a good headspace.
I allow myself to crawl my consciousness into the small spaces. Spaces filled with sorrow, fear, pain, all the bad things I’ve grown to enjoy. I can easily get trapped in there. It can become a womb.
Fuel for my creativity as I express these intense experiences. As I sob over distant family, of the confusion of a lover. I want to feel heavy, grounded. Rooted in something.
This lingering is ancestral. It lasts for as long as it needs to.
This is where I am. A space where all my unpleasant memories play. Where my wickedness shamelessly starts to show. Where I know better but don’t do better. Spaces I can replay, curl up in, and cry. For days, I’ll have crying spells. I feel heavy, like I can’t breathe.
I want to starve myself of what sustains me. I want to be a sinful person. Give up.
I don’t need to be fixed. I don’t think there’s a solution. I just need someone to be there for me through it.
I rock myself back and forth, attempting to soothe me. I’m on the verge of tears.
