Against the Run

Things in my life started to go against the run of good luck, against the run of what I expected, against the run of both destiny and free will, against the run of what was sane and healthy, against the run of the past as well as what I wanted the future to be, against the run of natural happiness, against the run of the sun as it rose and fell on either side of the sky. I simply stood stock still, neither looking back nor looking forward, not even looking around me, a passer-by only because others passed me by first. They not only passed me by walking, they started soon to pass me by running, as if I were increasingly difficult not to pass by. No brushing of light kisses, nor even an exchanging of glances. Later, however, I noticed things in my life starting to change after this seemingly interminable period of standing still. I was walking then running against myself, passing myself by, as it were, even while I stood still, and I ceased regretting my inability to ease into a proper run alongside those others who still passed me by. But I felt I was a tangled knot of not knowing who I was, having discovered I was someone at all. My eyes swivelled in many directions, flailing about to see whose body my legs were running with - or running against. My eyes then ran down the shape of my as yet unrecognisable body, running through various checks on what I was thinking, or whether these thoughts were actually my thoughts to think. Running through a whole agenda of life's ambitions - the most ambitious of which was to be conscious of a life with any ambitions at all. I sensed a hand running through my hair against the grain of its cut and weave. I was aware of a finger running across the teeth of a comb. I winced as I heard a nail scraping down a clean slate, about to make scratches shaped like me... The loneliness of a non-distance runner. Against the run of one. The run of the sun returning to repeat the night that had just gone.