I’ve been running again. It provides me freedom, in measured bits of time, away from the ringing, the beeping and the chimes of messages waiting, people waiting.

I come home soaked in sweat, my temples throbbing, my nose dangerously close to bleeding and collapse on the floor. At this point, all I can remember is being happy that the wood floors are cool, how hard my heart is beating and just how stupid I am for pushing myself this hard.

But the floor feels so good, I stretch out a little more and reach for those still cooler spots that haven’t felt my touch. Inching across the floor on my stomach, moving from cool spot to cool spot I finally come to rest in the den and close my eyes. My brain is talking, but my body seems sluggish - content to seek the physical comforts that a cool floor and moderate stillness can provide. I feel the sticky puddle of blood under my cheek and know that my nose has started bleeding. I still don’t move.

I don’t know when it is that I hear your footsteps. They sound like the bass of some song, throbbing through the floor with each of your steps. I feel the water bottle, sweaty and cold against my hand and close my fingers around it. I lift my head off of the floor and that throbbing increases until I drop it back down. I resign myself to rolling over and I am clumsy in the doing.

It isn’t often that I have to look up at you. You are crying. I try to open my mouth to speak, but my eyes are heavy lidded and I blink, and blink again. My voice never sounds. A moment later I feel you curl against me and wonder why I don’t mind your heat and you don’t mind my sweat. Music plays in my mind.

It is then the sound of a heart monitor going still sounds.

And I wake up alone.

It has been a while since I’ve been able to sit down and even check on the blog, yet alone post to it. Everything has hit at once and I am left to carry the burden, some because it is my nature to claim that responsibility and some because there is no one else who takes up the reigns. Mostly the former. It is my anger that tries to find fault in the aide of others.

Still, given my week - I’m close to the edge. I’ll post more later.

During my run, I stopped to take a picture of a park I was passing. The camera phone does it no justice, and no doubt, it looks brighter than it actually was.

I spent a fair portion of the evening running in spite of the current weather. It is raining and cold - the sort I generally only go out into when I’m angry. However, this time, frustration drove me there more than anything else. I was soaked when I came home, and cold - and I peeled off my clothing and dropped them into wet piles on the tile.

The shower was a blessing for its heat.

Now I have the week ahead to review. I generally do this Friday night so that I have an idea exactly what I will encounter during the coming days, but this week, I simply didn’t want to glance into the future. It is rather like a dirty room in a house that seems insurmountable, so instead, the focus is on the only slightly dusty furniture in another. Do you have that room?

In this case, the room is filled with work, not mine, but someone else’s. I am spending the next two weeks (my self-provided deadline) fixing the major -MAJOR- flaws somewhere else.

And I don’t want to look at it. I spent about 2.5 hours finding out just how messy that ‘room’ was, and it was all I could do not to set fire and start fresh.

I believe I am finally reaching the point where my career doesn’t fill the space it previously did. Priorities have changed. And I’m not looking forward to 18 hour days, falling asleep at my desk, and surviving off of energy drinks.

So for the moment, I am refusing to open the door into that room. I won’t even look at it tomorrow. Monday it can have me.

In the meanwhile, I am going to get some sleep. I’m tired. So tired.