Run
Run. Keep running as fast as you can, breaths exploding in your lungs and feet barely touching the ground. Run as if your life depends on it, and don’t look back. Keep your gaze laser-focused on what’s ahead of your, your periphery a blur as you leap and bound over every obstacle.
Run as though you are being chased. But you are not the chased, the prey. You are the chaser, the predator. You know your goal, can almost visualize it. It’s so close. It will be yours. You run.
Your lungs and calves are on fire. Every breath and every step is more difficult than the last. Have your legs already been that heavy? But you must run. Keep running. Sweat drips down your face; you can taste it on your tongue. It coalesces at the nape of your neck in your hair and drips into your eyes, the salt stinging them. You blink in a vain attempt to clear them and see straight. You’re almost there; keep running.
You can no longer hear anything above the pounding of blood in your veins, your heart trying to beat out of your chest, your ragged breaths. Whatever else may be happening in the world, you are deaf to it. As you run.
It can’t be much longer now, you think to yourself, pushing ahead with the last shred of energy you possess. You hope it isn’t much longer. Keep running. You can do this. You have to.
The world looks red, your pupils want to constrict, and you can feel the sweat pooling behind your knees and in the small of your back. You know you can’t take much more of this. Pretty soon, you won’t be able to keep running.
Every heave of your chest is a herculean feat. To lift your leg is like pushing a several-ton boulder uphill. You keep running, but your pace has slowed. For a brief moment, you anticipate your heart giving out and your body dropping to the ground right then.
But then, the alarm. You’re jolted from that reverie. The treadmill slows and so does your pace. You no longer have to keep running. Focus on breathing, returning to equilibrium. Grab a towel and sop up the sweat on your face, your neck.
Step off the back of the treadmill and feel the hard ground beneath you. The world is no longer moving. You can stop running. You can relax, drop your shoulders. Examine the room around you as you gulp water, droplets landing on your chest.
You are safe, for now. You no longer need to run. Without the pain in your muscles and your knees, you can focus on the endorphins rushing through your body and welcome the high. Your grimace can upturn every so slightly. Your cycle is complete. The stress cycle has completed. For now.
And for now you can return to the land of the living, of suits-and-ties, meetings and red tape, and cubicles trussed up to look a little less like coffins. Take your place among the peons and CEOs sitting at their desks in front of their computers all resisting the urger to run even though they don’t know what they’re running from.