Today, I felt free

I often write about running because it is a pastime of mine. I often ask people to run with me because I wish to share the euphoria that it brings me. I don't do drugs and I don't really like to drink but when I run I feel high, it's my addiction. If I can get past the point where it hurts, where my lungs are collapsing in and my shoulders cramp up then I can breathe through the pain. I can start to relieve all the hurt in my heart and become free and every bit of bitterness, anger, pain and frustration melts away. The harder I run the harder it is for the cynicism and fear to come back into my heart. As the golden leaves reflect their sparkle in my eyes and I feel the beat of the music carry me forward and move my feet, I feel free. It's like you can't touch me if you tried and its no longer me in a chaotic world, it is me at one with a beautiful world. It is in these moments that I want to take you on a run with me. We won't talk, we may not even see each other there but we will run and we will feel free and we will let it all go. It won't matter what happened and where we've been, it won't even matter where we go. We will just be free. And it doesn't matter if the moment we stop the pain and the bitterness crashes down on us because we had a moment of insurmountable glory. We were free. Today, I felt free, I felt rejuvenated by the beautiful Colorado fall and all the stresses I woke up with seem manageable.

Today, I was free.

Running

Sometimes I get entirely overwhelmed with situations that are probably at their core trivial and meaningless. Having just come off a series of conflicts with family and friends a few months ago, I find myself harboring anger that lays dormant inside me. Most days there is no direct reason to be angry at all of the people with which I had somewhat misguided interactions with but there are times where a simple statement of fact, a comment brings back the reminders of the horrible way I felt. It can be a name, an idea, an object. Last night, driving at 1 am, my mind wandered to the name of a woman who I don't even know. Her interactions with me are only through others but are catalysts for change and conflict within my relationships. Without knowing her, her mention, interaction with her, to know that there is any association with her draws me back to a place of anger. Sitting in my car, all I wanted to do was run. Not in the escape my home and live under a bridge where no one knows me sense. Rather, the physical, feet on pavement, hard breathing, really run and get somewhere sense. I run to make myself forget how angry I am. It is my therapy, it is my cure. Sometimes I will run so far and so hard that I forget why I even started running and I feel free again. In a life and world where I have little true independence and freedom, I free my body to free my mind. I hope I find time for a run today.