I run

I run.

It is 2:13 p.m., June in South Texas, 106 degrees. I don’t care. I run every day at 2:15 because it is the time I have. I work 11-2, 5-close most days (Mondays off) and this is the way I clear my mind.

I run because I don’t have to think. I run because for that hour or so I can feel the wind in my hair and can feel life in my veins. I run because I don’t have to put on any fronts for others. I run like a maniac because it hurts and I want to feel something, anything at all. I run because I have little to no self-worth but on this track I am hoping to find it.

I run because I left him.

I really had no other choice but to leave. I tried and tried, God knows I tried. I am now a broken individual and not sure that there are enough pieces of me left to put together, but I’m running to try.

This is at least partly my fault- if I wasn’t so broken maybe this wouldn’t have happened. But it might have happened again, I don’t know. And so I left him. And so I run.

Our friends look sad when they see me. They don’t know what to say, and so we simply don’t speak of him at all. He hurt me the way no one else ever has. He meant everything to me, for heaven’s sakes he held my hand while my mother took her last breath. We were both 17 at the time, just kids. I was foolish to think it would end well. Or not end at all.

A friend told me that even if I asked for his new number he would never give it to me. I am glad to have that friend in my life so that I don’t have the option of getting in touch with him. I am sad that friend has feelings for me I cannot return. I don’t want to hurt him, so I run.

Sometimes when I’m on the track I think I just found the right person at the wrong time. Can I really and fairly have expected him to do everything right? Well, I sure as hell expect him to respect me more than he did. Will we get through this? Will he ever want me again?

I run because I want him back.

Maybe I’ll get tan and toned. Maybe when he comes back to town he will hear I am doing well, looking great. It would feel good for him to notice, to care. I know he cares. He calls my sister though I won’t speak to him. Not yet.

I run because I have lost everything but I am looking forward. Someday soon I will start to feel better. With nothing left to lose you have everything to gain.

I want to feel again.