The Beast That Chases

I work in an environment that sees a lot of death; death everyday. Although I am sentimental, I am not particularly emotional in my nature. I joke instead. If you walk into a room where I am doing CPR, you will likely laugh at me, but feel guilty at laughing at my irreverence for this moment in this person's life that may be the second most defining moment they have experienced, right after birth. The patient may die and I will walk out of the room, wipe off the sweat, and go about the rest of my day as if someone with a soul and deep thoughts hadn't just ended his stay here in this world beneath my pumping hands. Their family will scream and fall on top of him or her and wail and need a dozen boxes of Kleenex. I am sentimental, so I am usually good with families in distressing times, but I am not particularly emotional so I won't cry with them. In fact, I will forget about them in a days time, maybe before my badge swipes into another twelve hour shift.

This doesn't mean I don't feel it. We all feel the dread of death. I lost my best friend/brother on Christmas of 2009. I have felt the thickness of grief and have been in the valley of the shadow of death. I understand the emotions that death and even the thought of death bring. But I do not express it emotionally, only sentimentally, with words written down.

The truth is that death leaves a heaviness in my guts; a heaviness that has to be lifted. So I run. My co-workers don't see me experience the weight, but they also don't understand why I will run everyday after a 12 hour work day. I run so I can smile and be free of the things that cause heaviness in the guts. When I run, sometimes I can feel it leaving. Sometimes I can feel it fighting back, trying to remain. I get angry and push harder, gasping for breath, determined to outrun the beast that chases me.

Until it's gone.



Sing.
Migrate.