I don't
remember why I did it--the first time I went running. I thought I was fat or
something like that. I put on a pair of tennis shoes and the only pair of
non-denim long pants that I owned, and I ran. I did this everyday. My feet
slapped the pavement over and over. I breathed in the air that kept dropping to
temperatures I didn't know existed. I loved it.
I was alive, and each biting breath of icy air told me so.
Soon there
stopped being a reason I was pulling on my tennis shoes. I ran because I had
to. It became an obsession. If the sidewalks were too icy to go I cried. I
begged my parents to take me to the gym so I could run on the treadmills
there. When they said no, I would get
angry. I would sit alone in my room and shake with the silence of my anger.
I wrote about my anger. Entire sections of my
journal are about my anger. I wrote how I hated the feeling. It wasn't like sadness.
Sadness was okay. It could even be
beautiful. But anger I hated. It was the mixture of sadness, self-loathing,
fear, and confusion.
The only
thing that could drive away this feeling was to run again. To feel the
invigorating shock of cold air in my lungs. To taste the wind and the sweat and
the ache in my muscles.
One day as
I ran I smelled a familiar smell. The smoke from a backyard barbecue had
escaped and reached my nose. I realized I was too warm for comfort, and I
pulled off my sweatshirt. The sun touched my bare arms and I shivered in
delight. My feet splashed through puddles from the melting snow. This was Spring.
I'd never experienced it before. Spring can't exist without the melting snow
and the surprise of forgotten sunlight.
It was
beautiful and delicious and I ran and I laughed and I ran and I laughed.
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