I Remember Running

I remember running when I was a kid.  It was freedom.  It was wind in your face.  It was joy.  The goal was not to get anywhere or lose weight or finish first or burn a calorie.  The goal was.....well, fun. 
Sunshine.  Green grass.  Good friends.  No cares.

It seems that life has a way of changing all of that.
Hormones kick in.  Girls become more than someone to play with....they become someone you want to "play" with.  School becomes something you dread, but need.  Here you learn the lesson of doing things you don't like so you can do things you do like.  Here you learn that not everyone wants to be your friend.  Here you learn that carefree running gets you beat up.  Here you find your real friends and begin the search for your real self.  Here life becomes dark and gloomy.  Here you see your dark self.  Here light hides behind the edge of the reality you are trying to see.  Here you can lose yourself in your pain, or you can lose yourself in the joy of teenage youth. 

Then life intercedes again. 

High school is over.  College or job.  Early twenties.  Mid twenties.  Married or single or looking.  Booze and one night stand after one night stand.  It's time to really come out of your shell. 
I was twenty-two when I really came out of my shell.  No more angst and anger.  Just me trying to have fun again.  The last 8 or so years had become a burden and I was buried under the mountain that my choices had placed on me.  I began to find my way out, to find myself....if only just a little.  I worked out.  I worked.  I met girls.  I fucked girls.  I made friends.  I told lies.  I found truths. 
I was running again....with nowhere to go but where I wanted to go.  I found a happiness in the simple again.  My friends were getting married and kids were popping out left and right and they were all settling down.  I saw them happy too.  I wanted their happiness too.  And mine.  I wanted every one's type of happiness. 

I met a great girl.  We had a lot of fun.  I found a lot in the world she showed me.  She made me feel young again.  We were friends.  We were lovers.  We found love.  But did we fall in love? 
We got married.  It was all so simple.  It all became so routine.  It all became too little.
We began to grow apart and neither of us did anything to hold it together until I decided it was too late.  She held on.  I let go.  I fell.  Hard.

Life began to weigh heavily.  My shoulders hurt.  My back hurt.  My heart was unfilled.  I began to feel old again.  The mountain hovered and threatened.  I got scared and ran.  This time, however, I ran from something. 
I met someone that lifted that weight a little.  She put breath in my lungs so I could let my legs carry me away.  It was love, again.  I just don't know what it was love of. 
There was a point when love was just love...when we were young.  Then love became sex.  Then love became deep.  Then love became pain.  Then love became a myth. 
I found a love of a feeling.  It was the feeling that she put in me, this new woman. 
I felt love. 
She was a drug of youth. 
It was no longer a simple love where it was free and given and never asked for but received and returned. 
Life makes love hard.  We make love hard. 
Even though she made emotions flow from me like the wind used to flow past my ears as I ran, laughing down a hill....she made love hard. 

Life became dark and bleak and stormy and horrible.  Where was that child who played in the rain?  Where was the boy who climbed trees and sat in flowers and stared at the sky?  Where was the sprinter, the laugher, carefree? 
He was lost under the weight of the world he had created for himself.  The character that had risen up from hormonal angsty bullshit and had taken stage center was finally getting his moment in the light.  He had killed something in order to find something else, in order to create chaos again. The young boy that my wife had shown me had grown into that same teenager again under the wings of this new woman.  She was promise and hope.  She was the dreamer that every pubescent kid has inside of them. 

It all came crashing down.  She couldn't carry my mountain anymore and I couldn't hold it up on my own.  I was buried and began to dig the wrong way to freedom.  Every choice I made seemed to make things harder.  I grew numb.  I grew distant.  I lost my wife.  I lost my love.  I lost my youth.  I was lost. 
In and out of her arms I fell, each time it hurt more and more.  She hurt and became hurtful.  I hurt and became hardened.  All of the pressure had become too much. 

Now that is all done and gone.  I am alone again.  I feel free again.  I feel sad again.  There are moments of clarity when I think that I will be okay, that I will feel the sun and the grass and the wind.  Then life steps in.  The ex wife is leaving the state with her new boyfriend.  My heart hurts a little.  My legs don't move like they were a day or two ago.  I feel the weight of my choices.  Love has become complicated.  I made it complicated.  I gave it up when it wanted to grow.  I reap what I have sown. 

I miss her.  I will miss her more when she is really gone.  I know that I don't see her or talk to her.  But I know that she is there.  Soon she won't be. 
What do I have to show for it all?

I still see the warm blue sky.  I still feel grass in my toes.  I still find shapes in clouds. 
I don't run with the same freedom anymore, though.  Now, I contemplate all my steps.  The joy of reckless sprinting has been lost to consequence. 
Life is deeper as we get older.  There are choices to make.  We can't always see where we are going, but we have to choose a direction. 

I have chosen some wrong paths.
My feet want to carry me back to the right one.  It is just hard to find the child who would let them do so.