WTAF Short Story: “On The Run” by Tumi.

On The Run…

ON THE RUN

       For as long as I can remember, I had always been running, fueled by the anguish that has haunted me from my childhood days. At twelve, I’d lost my darling mother in a tragic car accident. I could never shake off the feeling  that I was the reason she’d died; not when the last words I’d said to her were ‘i wish you weren’t my mother’, I’d said that in a fit of rage during a heated argument. I think that was when I’d started running, from what and to whom, I had no clue.
        I didn’t stop when my father had that fatal heart attack 12 months later because the pain of my mother’s death was too much for his feeble heart to handle. My father had always  been tender in ways my mother never was. I didn’t  stop running when my older brother died of Cancer because we couldn’t raise enough money to pay the medical bills. He would join mother, the one person who had loved him most. He’d  been the most upset by her death. I didn’t stop running when my own twin sister, my other half(as we often referred to each other), who’d promised that we’d do life together, lost the battle against depression and took her own life. I’d run when everyone blamed me for all the tragic things that befell my family.
       I didn’t stop running, I could never stop running, not when everyone who loved me was gone, not when everyone I’d held dear was gone, not when I was to blame.
      Every attempt to drown out the voices in my head proved futile. I’d looked for an escape route in so many places; at the bottom of several bottles, I’d looked for it at sunsets, I’d even looked for it in numerous pills. Whatever peace that came then was false, merely a mirage on the horizon.
       I was running, constantly, nonstop. Running until my knees started to buckle under the weight of my grief, running until the gaping hole in my chest grew so wide I couldn’t ignore it anymore, running until the voices in my head were the only thoughts I could hear. Only then did I realize why I’d never gotten to my destination, why the encumbrance only got heavier with time.
        I had been running from the one person I could never escape – myself. The pain, the voices and the memories, they were all a part of me, i couldn’t run away from my own shadow, I couldn’t hide drom my reflection, I couldn’t crawl away from my own skin. I would never be able to run from myself.

Potter Marie Dupain-cheng ✨