stumbling but not falling

I have discovered that one of the only problems with working out regularly is that I am subjected to the television programming on the screen that hangs above my head. This shouldn't be a problem, of course, if I had a better filtering apparatus, but alas, I am yet an imperfect human being in so many ways, and as we know, I am fully incapable of seeing words march across a screen without trying to read them.

Why is this a problem, one might ask, and the answer is really that I create a pain-free bubble around myself whenever possible. I avoid yellow journalism, and watch no television. I don't want to see what's HAPPENING NOW, especially if it involves young children shooting each other with guns that their parents have made available to them, either through actual purchase or voting habits that allow the NRA lobbyists to hold sway. I don't want to know about what celebrities have been so annulled by their empty life of stardom and conspicuous consumption, false idolization and absurdity, that they have drunken or drugged themselves into oblivion and landed back in the realm of the mere mortals in jail, or without children, overweight and hurting. I don't care, and I don't want to care, and I don't want to be assaulted by these things when I am trying to exorcise my demons, escaping through my pores and evaporating on my skin.

I try not to look, and be sad. I try not to shudder in empathy for those tiny little girls that are running themselves into nothingness because they have been lead to believe that the less space they take up, the better they are at being women. And still I run, and sweat, rivers, oceans, tears that are not tears pour off of me, I lift my shirt up to my face, I am not even breathing heavily, I am angry, angry, angry.

I am angry because no matter how well I do my job, no matter how much I try to avoid conflict, and dot my i's and cross my t's and organize my time so that I will be where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there, there will still be people who want to make things difficult, because they thrive on conflict, where I just shut down.

But I am learning, and setting my boundaries, a little, slowly, still, defending myself, allowing myself to be angry, to seek the help I need, the support. I will not crumble just yet, I think, even if there are children killing each other, and my life means nothing, even if I am drowning in an ocean of eternal solitude. I burn through it, muscles aching, stretching, burn, the pain is physical, not emotional, and I want more.

So I will forgive this minor detail, I will keep running, and singing under my breath, shaking my head to the beat and breathing in shortened breath. There is no finish line, and for a few moments, just a few, I'l enter in illo tempore, to the language and meaning of myth.