chasing the ghost herd

I woke myself calling his name. It rolled out into an empty house like dying thunder over a dark ocean.

Don't leave me I will die here, the words whispered out of my memory.

I sat up looking through the shadows in my bedroom trying to figure out where I was. What house, what room, what bed, which partner? 

The answers crawl out of fog. The little white house, the upstairs bedroom, BC. I let go the breath I was holding and with it the panic.

Don't leave me here....It's the part of our relationship BC and I don't think about much anymore; the precarious beginning.

For me, it was a dangerous last step from a water-logged rowboat to an unfamiliar but solid ground. Not really a step at all more like a leap of desperation. Desperation unrelated to love. Entrenched in survival.

Jumping to BC was a strategic choice. Falling in love with him was a happy accident. Perhaps those 2 things are more related than I believe them to be.

When I say strategic of course I don't mean for money/power, I mean temperament and safety.  When I look back I can see him carefully watching me. I can see through the blueness of his eyes. His hands behind his back as he leans into the dark to listen from his porch to mine waiting for anything that might signal I was in more trouble than I could handle on my own.    

Before BC, before his steadiness I had a very different life which now so perfectly crafted by 'distance', it appears calm and forgettable. 

I can almost believe it was.      

Like a city blanketed in new snow the past rests under a veil that is easily broken.   

I haven't had cause to revisit it. 

I have been too busy layering on protection. Too busy insulating myself from the call of the water washing against the haul of the boat of ghosts I left drifting among the pilings. 

But this is part of the journey back. I have started running again. Not in the 2-3 times a week way but in the way that gets under your skin.  The 'if no one is watching too closely I could sneak in one more run today' way.

And as my body remembers my mind does too. 

It hasn't been easy to get even this far. It feels like I have dug such a steep hole for myself that ever step is uphill. I'm not even almost back to the surface and I can see it is about to get even harder.  

Last night was the first reminder of how fragile my peace with my past is. How light the skin of ice that holds it quiet.

It is one thing to fight the daylight. To ask your body to keep going when it is tired and sore- and old. 

But to ask your mind to break down the gates holding back the ghost herd.  Let them out so you can chase them down one by one- it seems semi-suicidal and yet this the chance & the moment I see worth taking.      

The nightmares are far harder to our run than the miles, I tell him. BC sighs heavily over the line.  "You have to be careful," he answers back. 

"What are you running from? The antelope seem to ask.  And I answer them, what I have always been running from- myself." ~Taming Venus, mlb