a long time coming

“I can beat this” I say over the amber lip of a dark bottle of beer and through the fog.  Watching drops of water roll down his perfect shoulders, fall into the ravines of the muscles that spread up and around his body like thick jungle vine. 

“It’s been a long time since I heard you say that,” He answers sounding on the edge of sadness but his face is bright and hopeful.  

I am thinking about my long run today.  It had been effortless.  I could have run even longer had fear and doubt not caused me to be reasonable and stop.  I have pushed through to the starting line of ability (thank you crossfit).  From here doubling mileage is as easy as breaking through thin ice.  I can practically feel the summer heat burning up my shoes and into my legs as I take on mile 10 and 11 and keep going.  I can taste the silence the road offers.  Relax into the tired I earn.  I am about to regain my freedom; but I am looking for his permission to go.

And he is thinking about the times he would come home to find me unresponsive in the middle of the bed or lying soaked in sweat on the sofa, breathing the labored breaths of one in metabolic stress.  The days I ran sick and sicker, the days I pushed myself beyond the edges of my limits, and the days the hair on the back of my head stayed wet all day because it was a good day to run, and to run again, and just one more…I promise.    

“I can do it.  I almost already have.”

He shifts in the hot water steam rising around us.  His hand emerges from the darkness taking my beer from me and pulls me in tight. 

“I am already through the worst of it and I know it isn’t easy but if I am very careful balancing what I eat with how much I run. I can do it.  I get my miles back.”

“I know you can." He says granting me the permission I wanted, "but you have to be careful you have to let your good self be in control and not your bad self.”

“I know.” I say very quickly.  It echoes across the hot water. 

He laughs shaking his head, “Please put the good Misty Brown on....”

…sorry, she can’t come to the phone right now, she has gone running.