Chapter 1<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/b><\/p>\n
Fight or flight mode had kicked in again. She, a tall, thin woman with brown hair tied up in a ponytail, ran against the feeling. Or into the feeling. She never could tell which.<\/p>\n
The trail iced over in spots, forcing her to pick her way slowly through to the next muddy patch where she could let her feet carry her as they yearned to do. Here, she walked; there, she ran. Slowly making progress, although that was not her goal.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t exactly know why she was running, just that this morning a tightness in her hips had begged her to rise from her seat and get outside. She hadn\u2019t even bothered to change out of her jeans and knit turtleneck. It would have taken too much effort, so instead she tied on her trail runners and fled the house.<\/p>\n
After a steep incline, she took the left fork of the trail, which flattened out so she could run faster. She ran through the tunnel of trees, past the rock garden in which she\u2019d studied an unmoving tarantula this past summer. Later, she found out that tarantulas shed their skins, so it was likely that what she\u2019d been watching with such wonder was just the empty shell of a being that had gone on to new adventures.<\/p>\n
She ran faster now on the flatter gravel trail with fewer and fewer icy spots to pick through. And then, the clearing.<\/p>\n
Despite seeing the view a thousand times, today it stopped her as abruptly as if she\u2019d run directly into a fence. In the distance, overcast skies gave way to snow-patched mountains rising up out of a brown layer of what looked like dust but that she knew was air pollution hovering over the vast lake at the foot of the mountains. <\/p>\n
The hill she stood upon gradually melted into the road below. Brown stalks of weeds and grass poked at her jeans. Nonetheless, she couldn\u2019t resist the urge to sit. Picking her way around piles of pearl-sized drops of deer poop, she found a spot that looked relatively safe and dry. <\/p>\n
Knees below her hips on the hill, she crossed her legs and rested the backs of her hands on her knees. Dry grass poked at the tops of her socks, exposed under the hem of her jeans. Not expecting much, she closed her eyes.<\/p>\n
The first few seconds were always the same: darkness. Thoughts swirling, uncatchable like a thousand mosquitoes buzzing in her ears. Then, they began to settle. Just a bit, so that she could see that they were the remnants of the dreams that had haunted her during the night.<\/p>\n
In her mind, her skin shed a scab on her hand that she\u2019d been working on for a few days. Faces of past lovers floated through, leftovers from the college journals she\u2019d spent the evening reading. One in particular wouldn\u2019t leave. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0It had been a particularly fraught relationship, full of uncertainty, what-are-we-doings, love, and despair. Like every relationship she\u2019d had at that time (if you could call them relationships), she\u2019d wanted it to work out so badly that she\u2019d sacrificed all of herself\u2014her identity, her friends, her integrity\u2014to make it work.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d never let herself feel the feelings before, and when today she welcomed them in, they inundated her so suddenly that she almost couldn\u2019t breathe. A tear rushed down her cheek. Her fists clenched despite her efforts to remain calm. She was so angry at her past self for letting every other person in her life define who she was. She\u2019d had no moorings except what other people told her she felt. When she\u2019d expressed her feelings of love or frustration or anger, her partners would just explain them away and make her believe they couldn\u2019t possibly be her real feelings. Time after time, she\u2019d fallen for someone, been told her emotions were flawed, believed it, and lived with the torment of never understanding her own self.<\/p>\n
She had been surprised when, the night before, she\u2019d read a line she\u2019d written that said she often acted based on her emotions, letting her heart guide her decisions. That would never describe her now\u2014her rational choices, calculated to maximize benefits and minimize any chance that uncontrollable emotions would jade her thinking. To show emotion meant she was weak. She had to keep them contained in a box so that no one could mistake her for a stereotypical hysterical woman.<\/p>\n
Now, on the hillside, eyes still closed, in the dark depths of her thoughts, her body prepared for battle. Fists pulled in tighter. Teeth pushed together. Stomach clamped tight.<\/p>\n
Anger and sadness at who she\u2019d been (and hadn\u2019t been) rushed through her. Then, disgust that she\u2019d spent so much of that time embroiled in other people\u2019s manipulations. Each face that floated by reeked of manipulation. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I fell for it,\u201d she thought. <\/p>\n
She\u2019d been pushed and pulled by at least three, sometimes four, people simultaneously to whom she\u2019d have claimed she had given her heart. Time after time, she\u2019d proclaimed that she was falling in love with them. Time after time, they\u2019d profess some feelings for her, but then lead her on\u2014not returning calls, then letting her in, then pushing her away, then coming back. Shut down. Shut down. Shut down. It was always the same. <\/p>\n
Eventually, they\u2019d conditioned her to ignore her feelings. What she was feeling couldn\u2019t be real. How could she fall so fast? So hard for them? She was too needy, too flirty, too clingy. It was all too much, and at the end of her journal, she\u2019d written advice to herself in the future, \u201cQuit fucking caring so much!\u201d Underlined and traced deep into the paper.<\/p>\n
As she sat on the hillside, her body ready for a fight, she realized she\u2019d taken her own advice. Over the years, she\u2019d boxed up those feelings and stashed them away. Her heart began to pound in her chest as if she\u2019d just run her first half-marathon. Eyes still closed, her fists raised to the empty space in front of her. The muscles between her eyes bunched up, and as they did, her lips pursed. She imagined a punching bag and began jabbing at it. She\u2019d never in her life punched anything, but the satisfaction rushing through her body told her this was the right thing to do. Briefly considering and then disregarding what people in the cars below might think of her, she punched faster and faster. She imagined herself at a boxing gym, bouncing on the balls of her feet, channeling all of her energy into those fists and then out through the punching bag.<\/p>\n
And then, something happened. The faces were still there. The anger and disgust and sadness and despair still coursed through her body. But a thought appeared so suddenly that it physically knocked her back onto the ground. The dried stalks of grass poked through her jacket, but she didn\u2019t shift to relieve the pain of the tiny pricks. Two words appeared in front of her closed eyes: I Matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chapter 1 Fight or flight mode had kicked in again. She, a tall, thin woman with brown hair tied up in a ponytail, ran against the feeling. Or into the feeling. She never could tell…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[19,33],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-fiction","tag-wwol"],"yoast_head":"\n