Body as Home

I miss the roads along which I used to run.

Running taught me many things. It taught me perseverance when things got tough. It taught me to respect the boundaries of a physical body, and to distinguish between when to push myself–and when to take it easy. It taught me my own fierce strength.

And it taught me the times when I felt most fragile were exactly when I needed to go out into the world and smile at strangers.

We are each bound to a body.

And sometimes it isn’t the body we would choose.

Sometimes the boundaries it forces us to live within feel constricting.

But that’s another thing that running reminded me of:

My body is the place of liberation. Of self-expression.

It is my home.

At times, the only real home I’ve had.

The final home.

I was born here.

And I will die inside this skull.

These days, my body doesn’t always offer me the deal I wanted. I can’t go running along those roads anymore. Chronic pain isn’t the life I would have chosen. But this is still my home. If I want to live, this is the deal I get.

Done.

So I am learning its new boundaries and developing ways to live within them. And for all the parts of my life I have loved, I love the body that has carried me through them—smooth and proud as the bow of a canoe gliding over silver water.