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I’ve been asked a thousand times over why… Why do you need to run? Why can’t you stop running? If you bring yourself to the point of needing surgery, you should stop. That’s the general consensus. If I was a reasonable person, I would have just stopped. Unfortunately, people aren’t reasonable. We do things because we want to, we need to, we see no other choice even if it hurts us.
I started for many reasons. At first, it was because I couldn’t sleep and the exquisite exhaustion that came after a late run washed over me like sweet relief that allowed me to close my eyes and rest. The energy still pent up in me at the end of the day seemed to just melt away.
Then it was when I was angry, often at people. When someone bugs me, I want to lash out verbally or physically. If it’s not prudent to do so, I can often feel rage still beating through my veins growing uncontrollable. Thoughts of hate and revenge would circle around my head until my thoughts were so bitter that everything made me boil. I took my rage onto the road running until it hurt. Until I heaved to catch each breath, until it hurt to lift my legs. The endorphins emptied out my thoughts and when I stopped, there was nothing left to think.
I did it to be alone. It’s almost as though I am agoraphobic. Individuals I can like or even love. People, I often despise. As a collective they are like sheep herding obnoxiously this way and that. Saying, being, doing stupid things and I am one of them. I see more logic and brilliance from the eyes of my dog that lives in a human world than in the humans that parade in it. I can be social, but it’s not long before I begin to despise people again and I run away. It’s me, my iPod and the road. In these cases, I may run for an entire day until I’m sick of the solitude.
The truth of the matter is this; I need to run. It fills a void that no other activity has been able to. Dancers must dance. Painters must paint. Singers must sing. I am a runner and I must run. It is as fundamental to me as eating or breathing. If I cannot run, something is missing. It is Love. I love to run. Just like the loss of any love, when I cannot run, I miss it.
If we only have one great love in our lives, mine is running. I have made it into something romantic. It’s like a religion that I must follow. I depend on it, I love it. It has never failed me.
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