Self Renewing Compulsion

"I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be."-George Sheehan

I'm always scared to begin again. That never changes.

After days or weeks or months, with limbs locked up like diaries I lost the key to, the starting line always looks like the "you're finished" line. Like a kid all over again, my fingers hesitate when it comes to the shoe laces. My throat's in double knots and I'm scared my lungs and heart are the little engine that couldn't. I thought I could, but, this time, you have to admit you weren't born to make it up that hill. 

I'm scared like the soles of my shoes will get in touch again with the pavement, only to find the romance is dead. Like whatever carried me 10 kilometres over hard ground in cold October air will have given up the ghost and left me, breathless. Are you there yet? Are you dead yet? 

Because running might be human, but no one ever promised that being human was easy. Loving is human too. So when you mash the two together and you're aching for something that's going to make you ache, that's going to put your back to the wall, your feet to concrete, the grit in your teeth, the anger in your heart, the freedom in your spine, the tuck of Vimy Ridge soldiers in your chin– what else can you do but oblige it?

I'd rather give in to the madness and the hunger in the fibers of my muscles than give up.

....

Going to go for my first run today in a few months. Going for my first winter run ever, really. Scared. Might report back later.