8-30

I run, though I am tired. It feels good to move, to send my mind down into my body and feel the strength building within.

It's a glimpse of old routines; the familiarity comforts me. I have been gone from myself too long, and I am welcomed back. My old self is still vaporous and undefined, but she is stirring in my blood, warming it.

My new self is within grasp. I see her before me, and I run, detaching my brain before I sense the usual conceptual urgency to breach old and new.

I must be patient.

I'm not good at patience. I want to fight, leap forward, to skip ahead, and my feet on the dirt ground unconsciously pick up their pace. I am uncomfortable on this bridge between what I was and what I will be. I want to see the fruit of my efforts. I run toward an image of fulfillment, contentment. Cut lawns and cement floors in the morning, watching the sun fade slowly through the trees at night.

I am not my old self, not truly, and never will be again. Thank God. I have faith now. I trust in my own strength and determination. I have seen the worst in me and accepted it. I have seen the best and I know how to feed it.

Now I only wait.

The air is cool and I am running farther than I expected; my body feels light and charged, this is my weather, this is my territory. I run and I try not to think, to only see and appreciate. I race past the thoughts that begin to swell and whirl. Concerns and worries about my future. Images from the news that make the pit of my stomach blacken. Thoughts of you and of her and of what if and maybe and how.

I tamp them all down and I run, because I need to do something to feel I am moving forward, and I am not a patient woman.