Running Away

I could hear the wind rustling the trees behind the beats of my headphones. Somewhere in the dark, things are still moving, still breathing.

I set off for this run about eight - night had already fallen over London and the winter cold descending on to the people and pavements below. I could have stayed in and waited for sleep to take over me but I couldn't bear the conscious hours before that happened.

You want to make it more painful. More painful.

It is about two degrees out tonight and I can feel the cold tightening its grip around my arms and legs, gnawing particularly at my ankles. This will keep me busy until bedtime and it'll help me to forget about the issues wringing my neck.

Block it all out - the memories of events you don't want to believe have happened.

It's easier to think about the pace of my run. I clocked in forty minutes on the usual five miles last time. I should be able to clock in another forty...or if not less. The headlights of cars coming in the opposite direction blind me at intervals and I find myself constantly having to readjust myself to the darkness.

You know you can't handle it. It's all flitting about in your mind. Flashbacks and glimpses...I can feel the anger and the upset flooding into my mind

I decide to turn down a road I don't normally take. I probably shouldn't be taking an alien route but I hope it'll take me a longer time to complete which will mean less time sitting on my own thinking about...everything. I can see it all, feel it all...

You know it's all there. Feel it.

I can't feel my legs. It's really cold.

It's there. You can't run away from it.

I'm not sure where I'm going now. I think I've taken a wrong turn. I can't get out.

It'll always be there. The pictures, the feelings, the...

It all needs to go the fuck away.

I'm lying on the pavement. My hands and knees grazed from the fall. I'm seeing stars and realise that I've hit my head on the way down. I can't get away from it all - I'm now sitting on the pavement, in the dark, on my own, thinking of everything I've been trying to run away from. I lean against the fence behind me and wait for the pain to pass. Cars rattle by in the mean time and I watch them disappear around the bend of the road; just makes me wish moving on was as easy as changing direction. I finally get up and make my way home, tired and tearful.