One step after another, I seem to be walking an endless path. That is how it has been for me lately. I keep diving into endless air of nothingness and I don’t know when it is going to end. I began running a couple months ago. I started because just like every other girl I was hoping to lose a little bit of weight. Now I am addicted. I love it. The fresh air is always reassuring and gymnastics has just been frustrating me lately. It was a way to get rid of all that stress I kept tensed up. At the time I started running I’d been having some rough times with my ex boyfriend. I’m new to the whole dating thing. It was also difficult to fight and rebel against the groups that teenagers had created. I’m new to having to worry about how you look and if your make up is ok. The biggest problem of all would have to be boys. They are everywhere and I’ve noticed that it turns friends against each other. I was even ditching my friends to go hang with my boyfriend. Is it really worth it at this age though? My mom had always said that working out could get addicting. No one really got why I’d run out in the rain and snow.
It was snowing outside as I stepped onto my front porch and sucked in air. I didn’t hesitate as I stuck my tongue out to catch some little drops. It was early morning and I was getting ready to go to the bus. I walk the last couple steps to the bus stop and on schedule he was there. He wraps his long arms around me and I instantly feel at ease. School had been passing a lot quicker this year and already half of the year was gone and I was still with him. His name was Conrad. I knew I had it bad. Standing there I cursed myself because I couldn’t be mad at him for the not calling and the constant times he has let me down while he was with me. I wish I could have just stood there and yelled, but that wasn’t happening. I just melt when I’m there with him. I tried once again to look up at him and tell him how much he had really hurt me, but again I cast my eyes downward quickly. The day past and I soon found out about the constant texting he had been doing with Kayla. I know my friends are just trying to look out for me when they say things about him and tell me about what he is doing behind my back. Sometimes, I wish they would just be quiet though. Now, I wonder if maybe they where trying to tear me and him apart. I know some didn’t approve of us two. If I hadn’t known about that texting I would have been fine, I wouldn’t have broken down on the bus and made a fool of myself. Behind tears I’d wanted him to tell me it was ok, that he still loved me and everything was just fine, but that didn’t go as planned. Instead he just sat there and looked at me. It was pathetic. That night, I thought. I tend to over think things too much. I wasn’t planning on breaking up with him when I told him to come hang with me as just friends the next day. He had made me so happy. He had kept me in line and pulled me out of the constant bickering with friends. He had cared, but as the words “I think we should end it” slipped out of my mouth I kept telling myself that he had cared, but not anymore. I thought that how we had broken up couldn’t have been better and we where still at peace with each other, promising to be friends. I knew that when I was talking to him my head was clear and it was really me thinking, not my friends telling me I should just cut it off. It was my choice, and once I make a decision I stick with it, there is no way to go back. We sat for a while and I was crying again, the tears falling helplessly. Snow splattered on my skylight in my room tapping a melody to the music played in the background two. The music that just hours before I had been listening to and laughing and that now seemed dead and lifeless like me. I wonder if that was the right thing to do. I knew what we where doing was wrong, but not everything in me agreed to that. I went to bed that night feeling old and wise, like I had gone through to much.
I thought everything would be alright between us. Now I’m sitting here and telling you that it was all wrong! I’m saying that when I went to go run off the pain I slipped and fell on the ice. I was soaked to the bone and there was no one there to help me up again. I know Conrad was probably watching me. I have been called a klutz many times but getting up after that fall, with icy water all around me was the worst. It was terrible trying to walk away with some dignity but my legs shook and felt like they where filled with led. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so miserable.
I admit that I had suicidal ideas. I thought about joining people that cut themselves or do drugs. I wondered if I could pull it off by just staying numb and not letting anything effect me. It wasn’t just the break up but the peer pressure. It was my brain telling me that I had failed. It was the building tensions between me and my parents and the stress of it all. In reality though, is destroying life really worth it? I want to make my life great and worth living because I only have one to live. I want to make a difference in something, not sit back and watch as others do it. So one step after the other is what I took and soon I got over it. Running was my anti drug. I became faster and stronger and there where times where I felt like I was flying as the air whipped against my face. I could do this and it would never let me down, it is what I hung onto. No one could take this away from me. When I’m running I there is no worry about how look. It kept me going through the toughest times and I will never forget that. In the end, everyone moves on and that is just what I did. There are still times where I look back at this, times where I’m dragged back into the past, but sometimes you have to get your head out of the past and concentrate on the future because that is what you can change.