Running Free....

I can hear his voice as if it were yesterday....

It was my first epic fall...

And of course, I called my Daddy for encouragement...

Sympathy...Support....

What I got was...

“you run enough mountains , you are bound to fall down sometime...”.

I had scree rash up my back right leg... my butt... lower back... shoulder and arm...

And I was hurting....

Even better...

I finished the run...

Bleeding...

Stinky...

And exhausted..

Only to end up finding a sign at the bottom of the trail reading...

“caution.. BEAR IN AREA”.

I still get a bubble of laughter each time I think about that adventure...

The thrill...

My first summer chasing mountain trails...

My first summer of freedom...

Finding myself at the end of each exhausting adventure...

Learning to “run free”...

And again tonight, as I lay in my bed... pouting...

Those same words echo in my memory...

“You run enough mountains... you are bound to fall down sometime...”

And fall I did....

It was the classic kind...

A creative...

Crazy...

Once in a lifetime tumble...

A face plant....

Covering you from toe to neck in glorious mud...

With no one around to youtube...

Yet, the innocence and hilarity of it has long since past...

And I sit here... restless... longing...

After 3 weeks of treatment and one week of approved yoga...

A torn knee.... and a broken spirit...

There are moments I feel 100%....

And I’m dying to get back out there and strive for my carefully laid out goals...

And there are moments...

That lead into days...

That feel like today...

A sharpness...

And swelling...

A constant pain to remind me that I am not there yet...

And it’s in those moments that I struggle to remain focused...

Positive...

Cheerful...

It’s in those moments that I want to just let it break me down...

I want to succumb to the disappointment...

The pain...

To cry...

Yet,

They are only moments...

And along with the bad there are many good.... encouraging....

So I will re-focus my energies on healing...

I will remind myself that tomorrow will come...

And I will look to the freedom of that summer...

The summer I first learned what it was like to fall down...

I will shed the stresses of always improving for others eyes...

And I will once again learn what it means to...

“run free”