my feet haven’t hit these wooden floorboards in years, over half a decade since i’d wake up at the crack of down and run along this quiet, crooked crescent at the edge of brooklyn hoping to find answers to questions i was too afraid to ask.
i went eleven miles once and i would’ve kept going — but i had to teach myself limits. i drowned myself in sweat that morning and then i went home and i fell asleep.
i miss it. i miss my body pulling me that way, pulling me in a way that felt like it was towards something good. i miss pushing my body, pushing my body in a way that made me feel unstoppable, unbreakable, untouchable. i find that these days i’m swallowing my body down into a never-ending pit of nothingness, hoping to find those answers that i’ve been chasing down for years, but all i am able to find is just how stoppable i am, just how breakable and fragile this chosen body of mine really is. no broken bones and yet i feel as if every inch of my body, in a phantom-like way, is incorrectly placed and shaped and broken. the more of me that enters the pit, the less of me i have left.
in moments of optimism, slivers of that old, young version of me will appear like a saving grace. she’s still around, but who am i now now that i’ve gotten to know over a thirty dozen me’s since i was her? have you ever met some fifty versions of yourself and none of you could agree on an answer to the same question? do you know what it’s like to wake up every morning a different version of yourself and you can’t go back to who you used to be — she’s gone — but that doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten her, and it doesn’t mean that you know who you’re becoming either, so you’re stuck in no man’s land, hoping, praying that what comes next is better than before — and that the answers will appear one day, seemingly out of thin air, without you even having to ask the questions?
back then, the sun silently crackled in the pale blue sky. it warmed my skin in a soft embrace, a golden halo covering my body like an outline, like a safeguard. even with all the chaos inside of me, the outside world was peaceful, quiet, beginning — a chance to start anew.
and i feel like that possibility is still here but it’s been tainted by years of failures that have felt like consecutive death sentences.
some days i have some answers, other days i don’t have any and i don’t know if i’m asking the right questions. i do know that i still want to run. that urge has never quite left.