This morning I went for a run. It was lovely. And then I fell. And, as my friend Kate pointed out, I am tall–so the fall was that much further for me. Oh, the things we tall people have to endure. Don’t even get me started on sleeves and how they don’t fit me sometimes. Although, it might help if I didn’t keep taking hand-me-downs from my five-foot-one friend, I guess. It’s just that the clothes she gives me are so cute, I figure I can make them work, a la Tim Gunn.

So due to this fall, I got to walk around today with a badly scraped up right shin, two monkey band-aids on my knee, and some cuts on my hands. You’re welcome, Charlotte. I mean, I could have covered all that up with some sensible pants, but no. I wore a dress. Because, really, why would anyone purposely hide monkey band-aids? It just makes no sense.

I am writing a story. “It’s not about me, though,” I tell people. “What’s it about?” they ask. “A broken-hearted girl who lives in the woods with her parents…” and by then, I realize how it sounds and so I start laughing and admit that, okay, so I might be in there a little bit. I find it hard to not write what I know and what I’ve seen and what I’d like to see. I find it hard to not dream through the words that I put together; almost just as hard as it is to not re-live my seasons through the other words I put together.  I am not sure if this is a bad thing or a good thing; I suppose it just is. It is a vulnerable thing, I know that.

People tell me that it is good that I have not, as of yet, run away. That I have stayed in the place where I was hurt so badly. That I buried my little life right here and then have watched as what I had thought was a prison turned out to be a cocoon, after all. I hope, anyway. And yes, that is true. Mostly.

But what is also true is that I run away many, many times. Twyla Tharp said, “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home,” and as soon as I read that I recognized its truth. There have been times when it hurt to breathe, even; and so I took out some words and arranged them just so and suddenly I could breathe and the words were like a mirror and I didn’t hate my reflection, after all. I thought that the girl I saw there should live. She should eat dinner. She should pet warm puppies.

Other times,  I was so struck by the thought that this was all wrong; I was stuck in this sense that I had gotten off at the wrong stop and no, no, no, no, no! because this cannot be me. But then I got lost in a song and I thought about the girl who I used to be and no, she couldn’t ever have written that. And I thought that maybe I had to go there to get here and I was kind of curious to see other things that ‘here’ might unveil.

So yes, I run away sometimes.

But I think I run to rooms that God has already visited. Already turned up the heat, flicked on some lights, and whispered to nobody or maybe everybody, “Jess is coming soon; I want to make sure it’s just right for her.”  And then he made sure to slip me the keys the next time he quietly walked by.