For someone as obsessed with running as I am, I’ve always felt a crippling stagnation within my own life. One that is only perpetuated by the juxtaposition of the running.

(Tap, tap, tap)

Stagnant people I pondered - in a way that I had thought made me sound very smart and psychoanalytical - hone their life in on a thing and when they fail, their life goes to shit. And they stop.

(Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.)

So I was good at everything that could prove to me with numbers and letters that I would never sit unchurned like a bog water pond. When I started to feel sad and disconnected with my life I thought I could make it like a video game. Fun, interactive, and meaningless after your goals are complete.

(Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.)

So my friends drifted away upon a current I could never quite catch right despite the tutorials, and I met a cat. She ran - as gray as mud - and lived.

(Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.)

On the way to school I would see her - because nature makes you happy - and once on my way back I saw her hurt. So I took her home and used my essays as her litter box, and dedicated my study time to her healing. My cat and I. Nothing had ever compared to that feeling.

(Pound. Pound. Pound.)

Of saving her

And of tumbling in the waves