I wake up and look at my phone: 5:24 AM. I feel my heart racing and I’m drenched in sweat, but I’m also freezing. I spring out of bed and lean against the wall to orient myself. “Am I sick?” I ask no one in particular. Usually my morning rumbling signals to my dog it’s time to start the day, but he lifts his head to look at me, turns to look at the darkness still emanating from the other side of the window, and nuzzles back into the sheets. Meanwhile, I feel an overwhelming need to run. I throw on a pair of sweatpants but keep my same t-shirt. I quietly make my way to the front door and open it, doing what I can to not alert my dog. He barks like crazy whenever we leave the apartment normally, but I luck out this time since he’s still too exhausted and in the middle of his REM stage of sleep. Do dogs have REM cycles? I don’t know and don’t care. I just need to run.
The morning air is still warm, but not unbearably. The first rays of daybreak barely peek through the clouds, blending into the glow of the streetlights as the night sky turns from black to blue and a faint purple-orange hue gathers in the distance. I race and race until the pace of my breathing finally matches the beating of my heart. I don’t care about my asthma or the beads of sweat quickly gathering on my forehead and under my tits. I don’t care if anyone notices me. To the casual observer I’m just your average fat, short guy trying to get in shape with an early morning run. But this urge is primal and uncontrollable, like a manic demon has possessed me to run until my feet fall off and I drop dead. I wonder if this is how that woman from the fairy tale felt with the enchanted shoes before she danced to death.
I end up bolting around the apartment complex maybe 5, 6 times before reality starts to sink back in. The sweat, once a cooling and lubricating thing, now chafes my inner thighs and soaks my shirt in a sticky, gripping pain. My heart rate drops but my lungs once again need to catch up, and the lack of air in my body hits me full force as I collapse onto the stoop leading up to the apartment building, wheezing for precious oxygen. Where I once felt invincible mere moments before, I now feel nothing but my complete and utter inadequacy at maintaining a respectable human form. Sensory overload from the clinging, drenched shirt and growing hypoxia cause me to fall against the front door of the building, not even enough energy to muster the last few steps to my apartment door.
These moods hit from time to time; the inexplicable urge to run until I collapse, the need for some type of stimulation before suddenly becoming overwhelmed by the slightest catch of the breeze. It exhausts me, drains me, leaves me broken and tired before my day has even truly begun. I want to scream, curl in a ball, and fling myself off a cliff all at once. Yet all I can do is cry; I can’t tell if it is self-pity, or physical pain from my lungs on fire, but the tears stream down my cheeks and mix with the sweat dripping from my forehead to land in a salty splash at the tip of my lips. I suckle on the concoction until I’m disgusted enough by my own slobbery and incompetence to muster the energy for taking the last few steps inside and passing out half-naked on the couch.
There has to be more to life than just this simple routine of mania and burnout.
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