I run and I don’t know where I’m going. I write and I don’t recognise my writings. I sleep and I dream of things I have never seen. I see myself as another person in my dreams. And when I run, I feel like I’m running away from a self that would cease to patronise me only if I kept running, because with running I feel as if the air takes what’s inside, tosses it away, and gifts me with a new self.
I don’t get tired of running, and whenever I dream of myself as another person, I run.
The times when I write words I don’t recognise, I run.
I have been looking for a self that would suit me best. And I wish, like clothes, there were fitting rooms for souls, so that whenever I felt mine in decay, I’d go get a new, younger one. Or whenever I felt this wasn’t me, I’d leave it in the fitting room and wear myself. Yes, wear myself, my truest self. But then again, will the world ever be any less cruel? Will the tepidness of life leave my enthusiastic soul be? I doubt it.
I run because the air around me slaps my face and wakes me up to reality, a reality that the world will always try to change me. It will come with full power to crush me. It will work day and night to destroy every true dream I had, and every real dream I dreamt of, of myself being truly myself. The world will keep me company, but not in a good way. It will enjoy being a guilty bystander, and it will always claim to be just a bystander.
And this is why I run.
When I write words that only the world wants me to write, I will toss the papers aside, burn my words to the very tiny ashes of their being, and start anew. I will invent a new vocabulary, hell, even a new language, and I will hope that the world will not recognise it, will not understand it. It will be the language of only those who have true souls. I will put words like unconquerable and invincible and insurgent. I will write stories that resonate so much with the truth, that the world will die of its own falseness. And when the world spies on me, I will run again.
I will run until I can no longer catch my breath and the air can no longer carry me. I will run until I have exhausted every self I have worn and until my legs cannot move me . I will fly if I have to, until I lose the last breath in my soul and fall on a land that will bear my bones and my skin and my war. I will run until I find the place in which my soul will be buried with dignity, and the earth will recognise me.
But then I will run some more.
Artwork by Agnes-cecile
