Falling for Life
written last 2023
After months of chasing life, she finally came to me. After a two-hour nature walk. Or was it a run — trying to chase a dream my hands cannot reach, and trying to escape the thoughts the soles of my feet cannot outrun. She came. In a lake. While I was surrounded by laughter and caught in an embrace with new-found friends.
She found me in the middle of nowhere. She was there, waiting for me in the middle of nothing, in the stillness of a lake with the absence of chaos and noise. And for the first time in a long time, I felt alive again. The wanting to be alive, the thankfulness that my legs are still burning from the run, with my feet begging for a rest, and with my lungs gasping for air.
She extended her hand, her smile unwavering with a face filled with unworried peace. Without any hesitation, I looked into her eyes, and gripped her hand, tightly, unwilling to let go.
I saw glimpses of her in the months I have lost her. With the thoughts of maybes and missed opportunities. How I saw her in a club in the midst of people dancing, how I locked glances with her while flirting with adventure, how her presence filled the room while sharing a drink with death. The memories flooded me once again, on how I chased her in the mountains, and found her at the bottom of the sea. And how she only shared the barest of a moment with me, before leaving me, longing for her in each moment more. The balance of being in a relationship with adrenaline while having late night talks with calmness and sobriety.
She held my hand, while my fingers grasped at a future uncertain. I held her hand tight. I refuse to lose sight of her again.
I am alive.
I am breathing.
She’s here again.
Life found me again.
My feet were burning with blisters that never formed. My lips panted for water that was last sipped a half hour ago. I wince at the rolled ankle, and the pain that disappeared the moment I started to run. In the midst of everything, she found me. And I have never felt more alive.
And I pray to God, or the universe, or to whoever is up there, she won’t disappear again.
