I called my parents today, and while I was on the phone, I said, “I’m dying to get my heart racing again.” I was talking about having been sidelined from running for the last month because of my foot surgery, but after I hung up and started vacuuming my apartment, I realized that what I’d said means so much more than, “I want to get back to training for the marathon.”
I’ve never been an adrenaline junkie. That’s not who I am, and quite frankly, I’ve never understood people who are skydivers, cliff-jumpers, or even fast drivers. But I suppose I do thrive on motion—the idea that things have to always be going somewhere, that I feel useless and powerless when I’m sedentary, and that something’s wrong if I’m not pushing forward (for better or for worse; that’s not the point here). I think the reason the last month has been such a haze of emotion is due mostly to me not having that thrust in my life; I’m not running through Prospect Park at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings while the sun grabs me by the throat and screams, “This is your city,” I’m not making massive strides in my second novel because my full-time job as an editor has been so hectic, and most importantly, I’m in limbo between finished revisions and submission to book editors. In many respects, my heartbeat’s been at the same rhythm for the last month.
I know what I need to feel like myself again: my feet on the pavement, stress and brownstones left in my dust, and the full-bodied throttle of a ping on my BlackBerry, knowing it could be news from an editor. If I’m not sleeping, I need to know it’s because my chest won’t rest against my sheets because my heart is racing too fast. I need motion, renewal, progress.
M
