My life comes segmented in many ways, despite being as linear as anyone else’s. One of the main ways is this: segments in which I smoke/vape, and segments in which I run.

Those who have done both know they don’t overlap well.

The first time I ran was in my late teens. My mom was dying and my first foray into love and sex proved fucked up as all get-out, and I started running less to get away (maybe to get away), less to get fit (maybe to get fit), and more for the control (definitely for the control). I had tried cutting in middle school. Nowhere noticeable, but I’d done it. Liked the pain well enough, hated the blood, and felt it was vastly unearned, all considered.

Running proved to be a different, better kind of self-harm.

I started with “around the block before yoga” and quickly escalated to “at least three miles, every day, and then an hour of yoga and meditation.”

It wasn’t as healthy as it sounds. I also would challenge myself, see if I could limit myself to a single hard-boiled egg per 24 hours. I’d keep it in the fridge, and take small bites whenever my stomach started to legitimately hurt. Running burned like acid through my legs, but I pumped them anyway, breathing so deeply I came to my backyard dizzy by the end. I woke up very early then (and now, and probably in the future, too). The sun wouldn’t be hot yet, but it’d be just starting to burn away the mist that clung to the baboo in the back of the yard. I’d sit on our overgrown patio behind the plant my mom used to hate, had tried to burn away one season before she got sick, and I’d feel like I could evaporate too, if I just sat still enough.

I have gone about most hard work similarly. It is half punishment, all reward, and almost never done in a way that’s good for me. Every job I have ever taken seriously has also killed me. I’ve failed in that way, confusing all who bossed me, making them question how I suddenly took such a turn. Solidifying something in the members of my family that haven’t died, yet – there they go, failing again. Gosh, they must not work hard enough. Otherwise, they’d be successful, like me.

Writing is honestly the only thing I’ve worked at in my life in a way that fuels me. Even when I’m ‘overdoing it,’ the way I overdo everything I actually do. When I draft, it stutters at first, and then catches, and I draft for days, weeks at a time. My story twists through my life, weaves into every opening it can, and I have to type. It’s a compulsion, but a delicious one. I am never more myself than I am when I’m writing.

Not the best that I’m usually the best at writing during the times that I’m smoking/vaping.

Oh well.