Run
At times, it seems, you have no choice but to run.
In Gym
When I was younger, and easily embarrassed, I constantly found myself on the losing end of a fifty yard dash. After I would cross the finish line it took every ounce of strength I owned to stay upright. My knees would shake and I was sure I could feel gravity’s hands pushing down on my shoulders. My face – beet red. My glands – full to the brim. My lungs – crying.
At Play
There was a fear with running. An ache. Being slower than most when I was younger, it made it difficult to enjoy games like tag or hide & seek. If making it to base came down to a foot race, I most assuredly would lose. And if I had the misfortune of being “it”, then no one would have to worry. I could never catch them.
A weight would drop in my stomach and I could feel my hunter getting closer. A burning. That moment before something catches you.
At times on the street if I feel people behind me, I begin to shudder.
In Dreams
Many of my nightmares as a child involved me dashing as fast as I could down long corridors. There were no options to turn. Someone was chasing me, the only impetus I ever used to sprint for. As my chest tightened and the corridor walls closed in on me I knew that I was about to be caught.
My feet would pound the pavement harder and harder. My knees aching. The weight around the middle of my gut, quivering. As I couldn’t help but slow down, I would begin to feel fingers nearing my neck. The moment before contact I would wake with a jolt. Sweating with temples throbbing. Blood rushing. Toes tingling.
It would be years before I would discover whose footsteps were pounding behind me.
With Family
I had just turned ten when I ran my first lengthy distance. At a movie my brother, his father, and I were seeing I accomplished the small task of eating an entire one pound bag of skittles by myself. Consumption for me was easy. It was reusing and recycling that proved troublesome.
“Where did it go?” my brother stared with wild-eyed awe.
“I ate it.” Matter-of-fact.
“Ben, that is like drinking a whole gallon of sugar. Jesus fat-ass. Why don’t you pack on twenty more pounds!”
“I won’t gain twenty pounds. It was just some candy.”
“It was a pound of pure sugar. That’s twenty pounds…easy. You already look fatter.”
Terror washed across my face as ten years of baby-fat spilled down my face. It was the first moment I realized what kind of control I had over my own body. My body. And I only had one.
I had reasoned that I had eaten at least four hundred Skittles. The math wasn’t important; it was what my stomach felt like was inside of it. I would run one-lap around our home for every skittle I ate.
I began running; praying simultaneously.
Please God, please just let me break even. I can start losing weight for real tomorrow.
I wasn’t even around the house twice before my face was crimson, my brow blotted and my chest heaving. This was my body and it was failing me. Yet I kept going. Nine laps. Ten laps. Twenty. Everything around me ached. My stomach, full of candy, popcorn, and four sodas, was churning.
My mother says I must have passed out around my sixtieth lap. She had been watching from the window wondering what it was I could have possibly been doing. She found me in the back yard, wheezing, unconscious and covered in Skittles.
It would be years before I would try to run again.
In Rebellion
You can only be the fat kid in the back of the classroom for so long before there is a shift. You either ingest your role and become the pathetic butt of jokes, embrace your label and act overly nice to world around you, deny the truth and zero on other’s insecurities or lose weight.
For me it was really just a simple combination of all of them. I was used to being the butt of jokes and overly nice to people I didn’t like, so I started picking on others, refusing to eat, and jogging everyday.
While I wasting away, I couldn’t help but feel happy, and I actually became quite skilled at jogging. For the first time, in a while, people began to notice me. I still did not fit in, regardless, but in a sense that became part of who I was. Outside-in.
During The Flood
During the crest of it all; mothers going crazy, missing people and overwrought phone calls I picked up a new habit. Physically I could not be far enough away, but I could still run. I could create swift distance between myself and anyone. Emotional bridges collapsing.
In Rebellion With Friends
After a bottle of pills and a bedside confession, I ran until my heart broke.
My best friend from high school, the symbiotic/acidic best friend, had been going through a break-up. Something bigger than her body. Bigger than our bodies combined. She had lived through her first love and now needed solace. Solace that I could provide, but refused. I hadn’t approved of the relationship since the beginning. I hadn’t respected her boyfriend, an old best friend of mine, for a few years by then. I had become a third wheel long ago, dislodged myself and rolled away from them.
It was during my advanced US history class that I got the call from the hospital. I ran to my car, sped to Columbus Regional, my foot tapping the entire time, and whipped passed admittance.
They needed her pills. They needed to know what she had taken. I ran back to my car, speeding- watching signs and people and the past flying by. I broke into her apartment, a task at which I am ashamed to admit I am very good at, ransacked her bathroom and found the empty bottle laying next to toilet. Tears were welling in my eyes but I smacked my face and pushed them away.
Not now. Not yet. You have work to do.
I didn’t even bother to look at what they were. I was back at the hospital in less than five minutes.
That night, at home, feeling helpless and more than lonely, I ran. I put on my shoes, threw on a sweatshirt and ran through Southern Indiana backroads. I pushed myself farther than I ever thought I could.
I don’t lose people. I haven’t yet. Even when mom-
And I fell. Knees scraping along ground, locked up and useless. In the outskirts of town, where people sleep on porches, with no one around for miles, I howled. Screamed blood, salt, bile and tears.
I stopped running. She would be in my life for another year, before I could dash away and not look back.
For Vanity
College was another world. While still decidedly Midwestern, the people themselves were widely diverse; bodies and all. It was easy to lose control of every facility you once prided yourself for mastering.
Luckily I found a partner in crime; someone as insecure as me to push me further. We changed our diet, we began jogging religiously and started to even self-loathe in unison.
He made running something else besides penance. Even in high school, when I was in shape and swift, it was still a punishment.
I remember the moment it became a joy. We were jogging on an indoor track, the two of us, because of the humidity outside and the air conditioning inside. Plus we could more easily judge distance and time by using the markers the fitness center owned.
We were well past the point where we could carry on conversations while still clocking in at under a ten minute mile, but still others excelled beyond us. There were prototypical jocks who sprinted for an hour straight and soccer moms who had once had dreams of Olympic gold. They all could run father and faster than us. But instead of cowering or quitting, we began ridiculing.
You have no idea how easy a task can become when you spend your time making fun of everyone else.
A slim, six foot tall Adonis glides past us:
“Virgin. Total virgin.”
“I was gonna say Mormon, but Virgin works.”
The starry-eyed soccer mom:
“Used to be a man.”
“Still has her penis.”
The elderly couple who gave us a run for our money and only twice lapped us:
“Can’t get it up.”
“Having an affair.”
“Dropping dead tomorrow.”
“Too far?”
“Probably.”
“Yeah.”
“Besides they’ll probably both keel over tonight.”
The ultimate humiliation though was when a young girl, no older than eleven lapped us several times, so much to the point that she began to wave at us as she passed by. Her final lap she passed, turned around, continued running backwards and stuck her tongue out at us. She left and we dropped to the ground exhausted.
“What a bitch!”
“She’ll be abducted tomorrow.”
We were done running. I was done running.
Now
The computer screen stared back at me. The cursor blinking. The email frozen to the screen. I was choking on my tongue and inadvertently tapping my foot.
Ben, it’s your brother. Sorry I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t know how to tell you this but your father passed away on Sunday.
Come home
I love you
Levi
I had letters to mail and boxes to pack. I had a list of things to scratch off and very little time to accomplish them in. College was over, my body was beside itself.
I have to mail these letters, I thought, They must make it to the mail. I never told him the truth. Where did he run off to? I can catch him.
I left the computer lab I was checking my email at, screen still up, cursor blinking.
Outside, I could only think of finding a mailbox, packing my clothes, and running. I took a step and tried to push off. Nothing happened. I pushed again. Tried to walk quicker. Trees became messes but I wasn’t going any faster.
I have to run. I have to go. I have to run. I have to run. I have to run. I have to run. I have to go.
I stayed in that state for over an hour, looking for a mailbox to run to but only managing a plod, finally ending up in some woman’s office I had never met before and demanding her to put my letters in her outgoing mail.
I have to run. I have to run home. I must make it back to Indiana. I must make it back home.
An hour later I had made it to my boyfriend’s house. My knees ached as if I had just finished a marathon and all of the blood in my body rested in my face. I was sweating, but had put forth no effort.
It was there I cried, briefly and never again. I thanked God that I couldn’t remember my dreams anymore. I was positive that if I could remember them, I would only recollect a dark, shrinking corridor, fingers close to catching my neck, and the sound of my father’s footsteps racing behind me.
In Gym
When I was younger, and easily embarrassed, I constantly found myself on the losing end of a fifty yard dash. After I would cross the finish line it took every ounce of strength I owned to stay upright. My knees would shake and I was sure I could feel gravity’s hands pushing down on my shoulders. My face – beet red. My glands – full to the brim. My lungs – crying.
At Play
There was a fear with running. An ache. Being slower than most when I was younger, it made it difficult to enjoy games like tag or hide & seek. If making it to base came down to a foot race, I most assuredly would lose. And if I had the misfortune of being “it”, then no one would have to worry. I could never catch them.
A weight would drop in my stomach and I could feel my hunter getting closer. A burning. That moment before something catches you.
At times on the street if I feel people behind me, I begin to shudder.
In Dreams
Many of my nightmares as a child involved me dashing as fast as I could down long corridors. There were no options to turn. Someone was chasing me, the only impetus I ever used to sprint for. As my chest tightened and the corridor walls closed in on me I knew that I was about to be caught.
My feet would pound the pavement harder and harder. My knees aching. The weight around the middle of my gut, quivering. As I couldn’t help but slow down, I would begin to feel fingers nearing my neck. The moment before contact I would wake with a jolt. Sweating with temples throbbing. Blood rushing. Toes tingling.
It would be years before I would discover whose footsteps were pounding behind me.
With Family
I had just turned ten when I ran my first lengthy distance. At a movie my brother, his father, and I were seeing I accomplished the small task of eating an entire one pound bag of skittles by myself. Consumption for me was easy. It was reusing and recycling that proved troublesome.
“Where did it go?” my brother stared with wild-eyed awe.
“I ate it.” Matter-of-fact.
“Ben, that is like drinking a whole gallon of sugar. Jesus fat-ass. Why don’t you pack on twenty more pounds!”
“I won’t gain twenty pounds. It was just some candy.”
“It was a pound of pure sugar. That’s twenty pounds…easy. You already look fatter.”
Terror washed across my face as ten years of baby-fat spilled down my face. It was the first moment I realized what kind of control I had over my own body. My body. And I only had one.
I had reasoned that I had eaten at least four hundred Skittles. The math wasn’t important; it was what my stomach felt like was inside of it. I would run one-lap around our home for every skittle I ate.
I began running; praying simultaneously.
Please God, please just let me break even. I can start losing weight for real tomorrow.
I wasn’t even around the house twice before my face was crimson, my brow blotted and my chest heaving. This was my body and it was failing me. Yet I kept going. Nine laps. Ten laps. Twenty. Everything around me ached. My stomach, full of candy, popcorn, and four sodas, was churning.
My mother says I must have passed out around my sixtieth lap. She had been watching from the window wondering what it was I could have possibly been doing. She found me in the back yard, wheezing, unconscious and covered in Skittles.
It would be years before I would try to run again.
In Rebellion
You can only be the fat kid in the back of the classroom for so long before there is a shift. You either ingest your role and become the pathetic butt of jokes, embrace your label and act overly nice to world around you, deny the truth and zero on other’s insecurities or lose weight.
For me it was really just a simple combination of all of them. I was used to being the butt of jokes and overly nice to people I didn’t like, so I started picking on others, refusing to eat, and jogging everyday.
While I wasting away, I couldn’t help but feel happy, and I actually became quite skilled at jogging. For the first time, in a while, people began to notice me. I still did not fit in, regardless, but in a sense that became part of who I was. Outside-in.
During The Flood
During the crest of it all; mothers going crazy, missing people and overwrought phone calls I picked up a new habit. Physically I could not be far enough away, but I could still run. I could create swift distance between myself and anyone. Emotional bridges collapsing.
In Rebellion With Friends
After a bottle of pills and a bedside confession, I ran until my heart broke.
My best friend from high school, the symbiotic/acidic best friend, had been going through a break-up. Something bigger than her body. Bigger than our bodies combined. She had lived through her first love and now needed solace. Solace that I could provide, but refused. I hadn’t approved of the relationship since the beginning. I hadn’t respected her boyfriend, an old best friend of mine, for a few years by then. I had become a third wheel long ago, dislodged myself and rolled away from them.
It was during my advanced US history class that I got the call from the hospital. I ran to my car, sped to Columbus Regional, my foot tapping the entire time, and whipped passed admittance.
They needed her pills. They needed to know what she had taken. I ran back to my car, speeding- watching signs and people and the past flying by. I broke into her apartment, a task at which I am ashamed to admit I am very good at, ransacked her bathroom and found the empty bottle laying next to toilet. Tears were welling in my eyes but I smacked my face and pushed them away.
Not now. Not yet. You have work to do.
I didn’t even bother to look at what they were. I was back at the hospital in less than five minutes.
That night, at home, feeling helpless and more than lonely, I ran. I put on my shoes, threw on a sweatshirt and ran through Southern Indiana backroads. I pushed myself farther than I ever thought I could.
I don’t lose people. I haven’t yet. Even when mom-
And I fell. Knees scraping along ground, locked up and useless. In the outskirts of town, where people sleep on porches, with no one around for miles, I howled. Screamed blood, salt, bile and tears.
I stopped running. She would be in my life for another year, before I could dash away and not look back.
For Vanity
College was another world. While still decidedly Midwestern, the people themselves were widely diverse; bodies and all. It was easy to lose control of every facility you once prided yourself for mastering.
Luckily I found a partner in crime; someone as insecure as me to push me further. We changed our diet, we began jogging religiously and started to even self-loathe in unison.
He made running something else besides penance. Even in high school, when I was in shape and swift, it was still a punishment.
I remember the moment it became a joy. We were jogging on an indoor track, the two of us, because of the humidity outside and the air conditioning inside. Plus we could more easily judge distance and time by using the markers the fitness center owned.
We were well past the point where we could carry on conversations while still clocking in at under a ten minute mile, but still others excelled beyond us. There were prototypical jocks who sprinted for an hour straight and soccer moms who had once had dreams of Olympic gold. They all could run father and faster than us. But instead of cowering or quitting, we began ridiculing.
You have no idea how easy a task can become when you spend your time making fun of everyone else.
A slim, six foot tall Adonis glides past us:
“Virgin. Total virgin.”
“I was gonna say Mormon, but Virgin works.”
The starry-eyed soccer mom:
“Used to be a man.”
“Still has her penis.”
The elderly couple who gave us a run for our money and only twice lapped us:
“Can’t get it up.”
“Having an affair.”
“Dropping dead tomorrow.”
“Too far?”
“Probably.”
“Yeah.”
“Besides they’ll probably both keel over tonight.”
The ultimate humiliation though was when a young girl, no older than eleven lapped us several times, so much to the point that she began to wave at us as she passed by. Her final lap she passed, turned around, continued running backwards and stuck her tongue out at us. She left and we dropped to the ground exhausted.
“What a bitch!”
“She’ll be abducted tomorrow.”
We were done running. I was done running.
Now
The computer screen stared back at me. The cursor blinking. The email frozen to the screen. I was choking on my tongue and inadvertently tapping my foot.
Ben, it’s your brother. Sorry I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t know how to tell you this but your father passed away on Sunday.
Come home
I love you
Levi
I had letters to mail and boxes to pack. I had a list of things to scratch off and very little time to accomplish them in. College was over, my body was beside itself.
I have to mail these letters, I thought, They must make it to the mail. I never told him the truth. Where did he run off to? I can catch him.
I left the computer lab I was checking my email at, screen still up, cursor blinking.
Outside, I could only think of finding a mailbox, packing my clothes, and running. I took a step and tried to push off. Nothing happened. I pushed again. Tried to walk quicker. Trees became messes but I wasn’t going any faster.
I have to run. I have to go. I have to run. I have to run. I have to run. I have to run. I have to go.
I stayed in that state for over an hour, looking for a mailbox to run to but only managing a plod, finally ending up in some woman’s office I had never met before and demanding her to put my letters in her outgoing mail.
I have to run. I have to run home. I must make it back to Indiana. I must make it back home.
An hour later I had made it to my boyfriend’s house. My knees ached as if I had just finished a marathon and all of the blood in my body rested in my face. I was sweating, but had put forth no effort.
It was there I cried, briefly and never again. I thanked God that I couldn’t remember my dreams anymore. I was positive that if I could remember them, I would only recollect a dark, shrinking corridor, fingers close to catching my neck, and the sound of my father’s footsteps racing behind me.
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3:40 PM
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