Freedom to Run

Sometimes it gets too much. Sometimes it's all too heavy. And when it is, I used to run. I used to go out to my favorite place and run as fast as my too slow legs would take me. I would feel the wind in my hair, the crisp air exploding into my lungs and the pounding of my heart in every inch of my body. The exhilaration of running with such freedom, with pain shooting up my twitching muscles and feeling breathless even though I'm so full of air -it filled me with energy and life. Enough of them that the weight would feel just a little less.

Those were good days. Now I have nowhere to run. It gets too much, and then it gets even more. It gets too heavy, and then it gets heavier and I suffocate and choke. The load never eases off. I can't run, I can't feel my precious wind piercing my lungs. I can't feel alive with my pulse exploding in every inch of me. I don't have that simplest of freedoms anymore.

I just want to run. 

Dancing

I'm dancing along the edge. My body pulses in time with a song about feelings. I can't control the movements of my limbs, nor can I control the music reverberating through my bones. I dance at the line separating sanity from mind loss, and in my dancing I hop between the two sides.

My mind is lost to the beat. I fall a victim to the edge and gain my footing all during the same song, and over and over again. I'm not in control of where my body goes. I'm not in control of how my particles choose to act. The music is. 

The Sound of an Email

The sound an email makes after it travels through the complicated web and as it lands into my phone. That specialized tone I've set for emails and nothing else. That sound that seems hardwired to those parts of my brain that issue the command for adrenaline to pour into my blood. The sound an email makes has the ability to send my heart racing and pounding in my chest. My body shakes in response and my heart does triple its usual work.

A slab of contradicting feelings slams into my chest and fills me to the brim. One side urges me to check it, check the email, we're dying to know. The other side cowers and begs that we're not ready. I ignore both voices and reach my hand out to my phone. I don't do it because I'm  brave, or because I've listened to the side that's dying to know. I do it on autopilot. Your phone makes a sound. You check it.

My shaky fingers click the tiny icon for emails, I click inbox with my heart in my throat. And it says iTunes, or Twitter, or Paypal. It doesn't really matter what it says, because my mind reads it as unimportant, doesn't matter -not it. It's not the email that decides the rest of my life. It's not the email my adrenaline was released for. It's still not the one.