Sometimes I choke up, im the unwanted food piece blocking the wind pipe of my own life. In moments like these i sit frozen and stare into the distance not wanting to cause anymore disturbance to the environment than I already have by just existing.

Sometimes I second guess myself, rereading, repeating the words that came so naturally to me. I haven’t been able to write because I’m not putting what I feel into what I write. And I’m not feeling like myself lately, not very happy.

I’ve always been a slow runner but when I was a child my parents put me on their shoulders and kept me in the race just like the song I used to sing ‘you raised me up’ said but now they’re growing older and their bones weaker they let me go with a headstart and the rat race has finally caught up to me I’m having to learn how to run faster while the oxygen debt piles up and the brief moments we come up for breath it’s soiled with the dust of your friends picking up speed in front of you.

So you comfort yourself by looking behind at all the people you’re in front of. That offers only temporary reprise because then you think off the last person in the race and how they might feel looking at the empty expanse behind them and you can’t imagine it.

But sometimes you feel like that last person. You feel so alone sometimes even the thudding of your competitors around you would be a solace. You see the endless plains stretching in front of you and you see how multitudinous life is.

From where you are it may seem like there’s a lot of time left but you know there isn’t that it’ll be over like the seven hours of sleep you get on school nights.

I wish time could stand still but it can’t so instead I stand still and immerse myself in the red soil, trying to take in the feeling of being fifteen, of existing and you start to enjoy it because for a while there’s no one but you for miles.

However, slowly but surely racers appear on the horizon and you realise that this is how you’ve spent your headstart and it’s all gone now you must start from scratch, use the scratches on your skin as a map to guide you on different trails because your time standing still gave you some time to think and when you think, no matter what you think it will always be out of the box because for a moment you take yourself out of the race, out of active participation and instead you become an observer of the environment and see that you have been boxed in by lines of chalk for fifteen years or more, who’s counting. And no more will you allow it .

I divert from the path, I am running my own race now. Walking besides the running stream. I head into the forest.