Page 2 of Promise Me Nothing
Unfortunately, that is just not the hand that I’ve been dealt.
Instead, I’m a twenty-one-year-old ex-foster system resident, babysitter and waitress, fitting college courses in where I can manage the time and financial impact.
Of course, I feel guilty even thinking of myself like that. My mother was always saying there are two sides to every story. That just because I see something one way doesn’t mean that’s the right way to see it.
She had this thing about always countering the negative thoughts with the positive, something she was great at but, unfortunately, a skill I’ve never learned to apply on any kind of regular basis.
Like right now.
Icouldtry to describe myself as a young woman who hasn’t let foster care get the best of her, who is busting her ass to create a happy life by taking on two jobs and going to college, while slowly getting the knowledge and experience I need to build up a photography business.
I nearly gag at that description, feeling like it’s something out of a Lifetime movie.
I look around my apartment. At the shabby furniture and cracks and stains and… it just feels like I’d be giving myself too much credit. The reality feels grittier. Dirtier. More riddled with tragedy and failure and fear that still startles me awake some nights.
With my emotions full of upheaval, I know there’s really only one way to deal with it. So I drag myself off of my bed and over to my dresser and closet, put on my favorite old top from my Cross Country days in high school, a shirt so worn there are holes in the armpits, and then I lace up my ragged trainers and head for the door.
It was my brother that got me into running, back when I was in junior high. Our parents had recently passed away and the two of us were in separate foster homes in opposite parts of the city and I just didn’t know how to deal with my emotions.
They felt so big.
Too big.
Too overwhelming to deal with.
All the time.
Joshua was a sprinter on the Track team at his high school. A senior that year on the Varsity team, with the cool jacket to back it up, he said that running let him focus on something other than the pain he felt at the loss of our parents.
He told me how it made him feel like he was blurring out the world. Gave him a sense of calm that he couldn’t find anywhere else. A numbness that eased the pain.
The first day we went jogging together, I knew exactly what he meant. I just ran and ran and ran. When we were done, Joshua was gasping for breath, and I was in a happy place I’d never known existed before. We ran seven miles that day. I hadn’t known I could run that much, especially at so young. That I had the stamina or muscles or mental endurance.
I started running all the time, especially when life got harder. And in a tribute to my brother, I managed to get my own Varsity jacket when I made the Cross Country team sophomore year.
It’s still one of the nicest things I own and hangs carefully in my closet.
After stretching out my stiff muscles for a few minutes, I hit the pavement with the same end in mind that Joshua introduced me to so many years ago. To let my mind fall away. My mind and everything that I don’t feel like dealing with.
Today, I want to fade to nothing.
I start at an easy pace, my feet touching the ground lightly as they propel me forward. And it isn’t long before I can feel my body taking over and my mind falling in line. I run like a machine, without emotion or feeling. And that’s what I enjoy the most about it. The bit of nothingness that I can find when I run for long enough. Almost like I’m able to disappear.
Going on a run usually helps me pound out the frustration – a byproduct of a life spent running away from my problems.
I almost laugh at that. It’s something my brother would have said. But a lance of pain shoots through me at that thought, so I dig my feet in, propelling my body forward, hoping to keep my mind distracted.
And around mile three, everything starts to fade away.
My tuition bill, which is still unpaid even as the end of the semester looms closer and closer; the fact that Paul keeps cutting back my waitressing hours even though I told him I couldn’t afford to work any less without picking up a third job; Melanie’s face last week when she told me that she and Lissy would be moving to New Mexico to live with her sister; the email that remains unopened, taunting me from my inbox and reminding me that life can change in an instant.
It all becomes a blur.
I don’t see faces or hear voices or think about problems or feel pain. I don’t allow myself to focus on the uncertainty, the many unanswered questions, the constant unknown.
I don’t focus on anything.
I just run.
