This is why.

It’s a drug. After a while you really can’t stop. The repetitiveness of the air streaming through your lungs. The way the wind brushes your face. The surge of energy shot from your leg to the top of your head the instant your foot touches the ground. Your body longs for a break. Your feet are about to give out and your hips wish you never started. Your lungs start to feel heavy and whine for you to slow down. Your body can’t take anymore, but your mind and soul could go on forever.

You agonize over how it makes you feel; barely being able to walk up stairs, having to listen the cracks and snaps of your muscles as you sit down. You can’t quit. Whenever the thought even appears in the mind for .05 seconds it is quickly transported to the part of your mind that makes you forget. You remember not the physical pain you’ve had, but the emotional peace you’ve experienced. 

Once you start you can’t stop. You become so addicted that it may as well be equivalent to heroin in a way. It makes you feel so free and harmonious you start to wonder what the word pain even amounts to and if there even is such a thing. You go down the hill, up the hill, around the corner and through the neighborhood. Your lungs can’t take it anymore and every thought that asks why you do this is instantly ignored and distracted by the feeling of victory, tranquility, and sereneness. 

You want to quit and you want to cry. There is an obstacle forever in your way. You do it to ease the pain but once you stop the pain will come back. The pain is not physical, but the pain of regret and the pain of sorrow in which you don’t believe in yourself. You worry you’ll let yourself down. You are trapped in a forever remedy that hurts but heals at the same time.

It’s an addiction. It hurts but heals. It’s distressing but amazing. It’s good and it’s bad. It’s a blessing and a curse and the whole time you do it you’re trying to figure out which one it is, and that’s why no one ever stops. We do it in hopes of finding an answer. We don’t have any explanation. We do it in hopes of finding an answer as to why do we do this? 

It’s running. It’s an addiction. You want to stop, and you can’t. We do it because we can’t stop.

- Olivia Rohling (@oliviarohl)