As the day dragged on and I found nothing to ease my mind I pulled out the sneakers and headed for the door. Most of these past weeks my sneakers only serve to increase my panic and anxiety. They have come to represent the losing battle. The reality that I can’t run enough miles to offset what I am gaining. Today I was out of options. I didn’t know what else to do and the habit so carefully built over these past years just took over. I didn’t want to run my same boring routes so I set out for 7,000 acres of park I had never set foot in despite it being less than 5 minutes from the farm. The sun was slanting low and the heat was finally abating as I set off into the woods. There would have been a time in my life where being utterly alone would have frightened me. Today I welcomed it. I didn’t want to see anyone, or think about anything beyond navigating my journey though this strange landscape. and so I ran. and ran. Amidst the pungent honey suckle blooms and the shrills of the veerys up in the canopy. It was mesmerizing in its peacefulness. I would have run on into the darkness. I wanted nothing more than to just be free. To leave behind the drugs and the sorrow. The fear and the frustration. To stop talking and stop listening. To leave it all. To stand apart and alone. Myself with my choices. But there is no reality like that. Instead I return as always, cowed by others and beaten down by life and the responsibilities. It just goes around and around. I can’t get off, even if I wanted to and that is what hurts the most. I know now I don’t have a choice. I am broken. Life will go on but my heart isn’t in it. I am left with nothing but sadness and resignation. No it isn’t the darkness of depression it is the bleakness of nothingness. When control and mastery abruptly vanish the chasm is so vast and mind numbing. I don’t want to do anything but curl up and cry. I don’t want to look at the world going on around me, or the horses peacefully grazing outside. I want to pull the drapes and hides within the darkness. It is easier when I can’t see it. or feel it. The only peace I have now is in sleep. I long for the day to end so I can return once again to my bed. Only to find sleep absent as I dread waking up tomorrow and feeling so very empty and impotent. This is no life.