I run. Down the hard dirt road, the other direction than usual, as much for my mind as for my body. I run to chase the thoughts from my head, the tension from my body and the angst from my broken heart. I run. To feel the pieces of me that are still there, and which ones are now gone, to feel the familiar pains in my knee and shins that remind me who I am. I run. I listen to the raspy sound of my own breathing, filling and emptying my lungs of air, dust, light and darkness. I run. I wonder if the tears will come today, or if they’ll give it a rest, I wonder more out of bemused curiosity than in panic or fear, an evolution from the day before. I run. I need to smell the sweat on my skin, the dirt from the car that drives by too fast, and the shit from all the livestock along the road. I run. I need to feel the proof that I’m still here, and really where would I have gone, there’s no where to be other than where you are, and yet it feels a bit unreal. I run. I need to feel my physical presence and the strain and strength in my muscles and bones and blood, as often lately I am failing to find the strength of my spirit and my will, and sometimes my mental stability. I run. The road I take is the one out of Seronga, rather than my usually route further into the village, filled with the people who have come to know my name, and will call out to me. Their lives are the same as they were yesterday, and the same as they will be tomorrow, give or take the presence of water, and the knowledge from their test results as to the presence of HIV in their bodies. Mine is not. I run. I know I’ll never make it far enough to calm my heart, but I run faster at the very idea of it. If I just, If I just. If I can just.
It runs, as I run, through my head, like a mantra.
If I can just. If only I. If I could. If it were. If, If, If.
Nothing.
There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing I can change. Would I if I could, I don’t know. I used to think I did, but I don’t. Confusion reigns and has taken up permanent residency in my heart, right next to this calm clarity that is giving it hell in a struggle for power.
On a grander scale I vacillate wildly between empty and fullness, between numbness and a rapture that’s nearly painful, and sometimes actually is. I easily tire of people and yet crave connection and communication. I swim in rivers of uncertainty and float on an ocean of assurance. I shake my fists at the gods in one moment and fall to my knees thanking them the next. All the while knowing that I have control of little to nothing, yet fighting for it. Knowing in my heart if not my mind that time is the ruler of this and all worlds and states of minds. It is the only thing with the power to take away this pain, both mine and that of those around me, if ever, likely replacing it with a new one, interspersed with moments of joy and happiness that give the sadness it’s power and perspective.
And then I realize I’m experiencing the human condition.
Which is all one is guaranteed, or can expect from life.
And I relax, content to find the calm that lies within the storms, knowing that it will all happen again, in a cycle with no end. These feelings will come and go and continue until I take my last breath, and together the joy and pain and all the rest are the marker of being alive. I stop running. I start crying. I turn around and walk home.
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