I used to run.  I loved running.  Perhaps I miss this most.  Most because it was a constant all through my life.  I used my legs and my wind to carry me through sports and high school, onward to college and collegiate sports and afterwards through every aspect of life that came.  I played sports after college, in the air deprived land of Boulder, Colorado, readying to practice law.  I played sports after law school, finding rugby as a welcome diversion for my competitive needs.  It provided me with a group, a team, a family. I met my wife because I could run and play.  Nothing bad ever came out of lacing up my shoes and heading out for a run.  Countless playlists were labored over so that running would be effortless and joyful.  Heat was embraced, I loved the sweat that beaded up and cooled my skin during summer months.  Cold was respected and enjoyed, chasing frosty exhales as sounds became crisper and the roads more solitary.

My body remembers running.  Muscle memory, I suppose.  If I close my eyes and breath with intent and see my self stride off into easy job, my body relaxes.  It’s as if, the memory itself is still a happiness, a catharsis.  I try to not categorize the various and numerous things which I have lost, either through inability or lack of desire or oppressive barriers such as pain or nausea or risk.  But, running always creeps in.  Regret and remorse have not yet partnered with these memories.  I can still enjoy the residual memories, like a negative for those of us over 40.  I can still feel my legs stretching, my lungs never full, always able to gulp in the cottony air ever-present before me.  My body, as currently composed, is fat, and spasms and is fragile.  It breaks and splinters with regularity.  But the mind remembers the memory of this running, and just does not believe the contradiction that today’s mirror presents itself with.

I think I’ll change the mirror.