to find what is mine,

become beet-rooted

and bruised

in what I love,

without being

easily shifted into

someone else’s

version of ideal

when they

don’t fit

mine.

i’m going

hunting.

midnight sun

will illuminate the way

to the girl i once was,

and for the first time

i can bloom

with the bluebells

and breathe,

and be,

mine.

I went on a hike today,

The hike.

the one I seem to do

every weekend.

The trail that has been there for me

with changing friends,

awkward dates,

dead pets,

and on days like today,

where I am

simply trying to escape from LED-lit libraries

and the smells of stolen Expo markers.

I walk along the shore, and I hear the waves splash and whisper among themselves as they see me walk by,

“A creature of habit”

The broken ice clinking starts to sound like judgmental giggles as they see me walk by again.

********************************************

I wonder if I could drive 550

to the Wetmore parking lot,

hike to Presque Isle and back

blind folded.

I think I could.

Which is cool, nauseating.

The winds of a never-ending winter left its mark,

With mushy grounds from mountains of melt,

And a mass causality scene

of broken limbs and bodies of balsam fir

It is here,

Where I bump into past versions of myself

That hid behind the mossy metamorphic rocks

I walk faster,

Wishing I could run

and leave them back with the graveyard of trees

But I keep slamming into them headfirst

Like the mirror maze that made me cry when I was five

Confronting me with the mistakes I’ve made

And the self-sabotaging habits that I keep coming back to

“A creature of habit.“

The roots of home are

overgrown.

Tangling.

suffocating.

And holding me down.

I want to grow

I need to leave to know

If I really am such a creature of habit

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“To live is to move.”

A mantra I used to repeat as a moment of gratitude before conquering mountains or pulling my body forward on a layer of fresh and squeaky snow. Now I whisper it through tear-crusted eyes and swollen cheeks, sunken in my bed like a prayer, hoping one day I can live and move without creaks and a mind at peace.

When did my body turn against me?

Was it when I couldn’t seem to grow without needles every night and day? My small, tender arms became swollen in pain from injections of medications I didn’t want or understand.

Or was it I who turned against my body?

Keeping calories counted in a tiny tan journal in seventh grade, worried about my body’s magical ability to change and adapt. I did not want to look like a woman; I was not ready to be a woman. I did everything I could to stop my body from growing up and becoming someone I did not know how to be.

I was not my sister, who stepped onto this Earth to be a teacher, or my friends, who knew how many kids they wanted to have and at what age they wanted to get married. I wasn’t like my dad, who picked up the piano in an afternoon, or my fourth-grade friends who could write stories and draw pictures as naturally and instinctively as breathing. Running was the first act that gave me a glimpse of who I was, and I held on to it as tightly as my brittle nail-bitten hands would allow.

I found fragments of the woman I was meant to be on unmarked trails, hidden behind sun-stained trees and soft sparkling creeks. I took those pieces and clues towards who I was searching for as a whole.

Running gave me love when I had none to give, and took over my first experiences of love from others.

I was convinced that running had healed my relationship with food and my body, but instead, it was lying dormant under a rug that was one day going to be rolled up to expose fractures in pelvises and cartilage that had been ripped away to feel comfortable in my skin.

Two years ago by body started to beg that she had enough. Trying to get her message to me with a surgery marked with thick pink scars and injections of ink.

And I refused to listen. Still, the stubborn girl who helped her mom throw away all her toys because she refused to clean her room, refusing to put her ego down. I told myself that I would take better care of my body and not take running for granted. But the glimmer of an identity seeped into my veins like the IV of contrast dye. The fear of losing what I love keeps me restless at night and has turned my body into something I constantly scan and manage to keep this broken relationship going.

My body broke down, screaming at me, saying, “Second time’s a charm” with another torn hip full of synovial fluid-filled cysts.

And I have no choice but to finally listen.

Those pieces of me I found on the North Country Trail were just pieces.

I held on to the first fragment of myself instead of searching for more.

I will find more broken pieces on cold, faraway beaches.

“To move is to live”

I whisper with broken lips.

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