She has woken up from the haze and realized that she has run again.  Run out of reasons, and finally out of breath.  She blames the world for how she is feeling, believes that it has given up on her, ripped everything that was meaningful away.  And when she spins it that way it feels better.  It is still almost incapacitating when she forgets to fight it, but it feels better, better than it would if she were to tell the truth.

She was never good at truth.  She looks them in the eyes and she mirrors her two favorite deceptions...either the person they want her to be, or the person that puts that image to shame.  She is either everything you've ever wanted, or everything thing you wish she was not.  But what she guards most protectively is the truth. 

The truth that she's afraid of who she is.  Of where she's going, but mostly of what she has left behind.  She ran away from reality a long time ago and it was at a point in her life when it was easy.  He friends were growing up and moving away, and she stayed.  Stayed not because it was easy, but because it was the hardest choice she thought she could make.  To stay, when every fiber of her being wanted to run.  Run away from him, and tub away from life and everyone and everything that reminded her of him.  She stayed, but somehow she also still managed to run.

As she grows both up and also more in love with another each day she realizes just how far she has drifted from those she once was so close to.  So far that she is not sure how to get back, or if it even matters if she were to try.  But her heart hurts some days, knowing that she does not know them anymore, that she might not ever again know them the way she did.  And she is lonely, lonelier than she imagined was possible.

And it is getting much harder to lie.  It gets harder each day to smile.  To laugh.  Without also starting to cry... and her illusions fail her, for the first time.  But there is no one left to notice.

So I run, because it's really the only thing I've ever been good at, or felt comfortable with.  And maybe if I'm lucky I'll find something to bring me back.  You can never really go back, and the friends you had in high school aren't really your friends for life, but as I lay here I see their faces.  I hear the promises we made, and part of me still believes.  Part of me wonders if I wandered back to that swing set, or that pier if they might be waiting.  Smiling, ten years later.  Because friendship just changes meaning as we grow. It changes shape, and it gets much much harder, but it's always there.

Sometimes you just have to have faith and run in the right direction...

J-L

If running were a competition she'd hold the record

Her tears are dried now, her breathing has calmed.  She feels that pang in her chest still though, and her eyes sting with pain, with acknowledgment.  She knows, but refuses to believe it.  She knows that she is standing about a thousand paces ahead of where she should have known to turn around. To let go, again.  She wonders if maybe she wasn't built for a life with another. And the tears they fall anew.  Recognizing that she's sure. Sure that she's too broken to make it, but too wounded to make the journey back.  And she's caught in the same battle she loses every time.  She feels the overwhelming urge to run.  Run away from him and back to...back to what she's unsure.  Back to the boys that are as incapable of love, but also of hurting her? Back to the life that was okay for today and tomorrow and that's all that mattered? She knows that is not enough, but is also quite aware that she is unhappy with the place she has ended up again.  She's lost, and again she's alone.  He's all she has, but what if he's not enough?  What if no one ever will be?

She fears that she will always end up here, sad, alone, tired, and running before she has even gotten herself up off the ground.  Her lungs burn and her heart is being out of her chest.  She is unsure if she can quell the urge to flee.  The water it calls to her, as if all will be well if she returns to the shore.  To the only place that will ever be home to her.  This time he will not find her, he will not even know to look.  This girl grew up and moved on, but ten years later she reacts to sadness the same.  But no one that knew her then knows her now.  If she could drown this feeling she would.  But the only way she knows how could ruin everything.

and she so desperately wants to care, but she fears it will not matter until it is much too late and she has gone much too far. 

If only he knew it was time to save her, maybe she'd survive, maybe she'd want to.  Maybe she wouldn't still want to run...