Running for my life

I do it because I can. I do it because each step is my own, and at one time I wasn't sure I'd ever been in control of something so natural ever again. I run because much like the reason I write, there is something in me, something that needs out something that gets out, fast and hard, with each jarring, pounding step.
I run because when I was in the hospital, the doctors and nurses and concerned parents and therapists wouldn't let me, wouldn't let me so much as shuffle down the quiet hallway by myself.

I watch the seconds round into minutes, and I find another reason for running. It is here, on the treadmill, or out on the sidewalk, the trail by the lake or through the park, that time moves slower for me. Each step, at first, during the warm up, is taken slowly and deliberately, without the urgency I apply to my life. As the slow rubber tread whizzes by and hums with the motor inside, it is a step in time and nothing more. It's not like that for me at any other time during the day.
See, when you almost die at 22, everything afterwards--everything--must be more deliberate (even if it is spontaneous). Actions must be recognized and appreciated because you never know when they will be the last of their kind. Time moves faster for me than is does for you. No, no, you say, science and physics... I know. Sure I do. But its inexplicable, this time warp thing. It might be the crazy pinging and flashing of my brain gone awry, but my world simply moves faster than yours.
But when I run, it all seems to slow down.

I squish up on the green arrow, feel the mechanized button below my finder dip into the electrical board to set off the chain reaction that increases the speed. Below me, I feel the metal (plastic? who knows) board supporting me give ever so slightly under my foot an the whirring black tread. Even when the speed increases and the blood rushed quicker, hotter, faster inside my straining legs, time is slowed for me and I'm lost in the movement of the run and taken out of my body and my world.

I run from myself not because I'm afraid of death--when I'm gone, I'll be gone, poof-- but because I'm afraid of one day not being myself, totally and completely. I'm afraid that I won't be able to run, to think the thoughts I think while doing it, won't be able to lose myself in a run because I'll already have lost it all anyway.

Seven is a good place for the squishing arrow to stop at, and as I increase another arrow to five and feel the incline's burn in my calves, I'm fighting and pushing and huffing to keep up with the course. After a half hour, I'd just like to sit down and call it a day. But this thirty minute struggle is nothing, just one machine fighting another. And that too, is why I run. Fighting myself, grinding against my own faulty machinery reminds me that I am alive and able to do it, normal in my own way.

Eventually, because my leg is numb and not to be trusted after the two miles at this clip, I slow down, ease the mobile track down to a walking speed, imagining myself zooming off the treads backwards--splat! a cartoon caricature of eyes and mash on the wall behind me.

That's ok though, I was getting tired anyway, and nothing compares to a good stretch and recovery after a long hard run.