What Am I Running From?

Short answer?
I don’t fucking know.

I could tell you it’s my parents. That tired, dusty cliché:

They fucked me up.

And yeah—maybe they did.
Not on purpose.

My mom had a storm inside her skull she couldn’t outwalk.
My dad spent every waking second trying to outrun poverty.
We had rules for how many slices of bread we could eat.
How many glasses of milk.
How many cookies.

It wasn’t abuse.
It was survival.

But here’s the truth:

I think I’m running from things I do to myself.

I’ve been hit so many times by life—
so many funerals, betrayals, close calls, fucking emergencies at 1:30AM—
that I’ve started building the bomb before anyone else has a chance to drop it.

I push people away.
Not because they scare me.
But because closeness does.

Two decades ago, I moved to a new city with my best friend.
New school. New state. I paid for it all with the money my dead brother left me.

Four months in, I bought some furniture without asking.
Didn’t talk to him about money.
And one random day, I blew up.
Moved out.
Left him on the hook for everything.

That story?
It’s a fucking madlib of shame.
Swap out the nouns, and you’ve got every relationship I’ve ever sabotaged.

I’ve avoided my own family.
Didn’t see my mom much before she died.
Sighed when my dad or brother called.
Ignored a call I thought was a bill collector—
turned out it was my brother.
It was the last time he called.

Why?

Because if someone’s not close to you,
it hurts less when they go.

That’s the lie I sold myself.
That distance = safety.

But the older I get, the more I realize:

Everything that saves you also has the power to destroy you.

You love hard? You lose hard.
Buy a car? It bleeds you dry.
Eat your favorite food? It kills you slowly.
Choke down the stuff you hate? It keeps you alive.

Life’s not about avoiding the hurt.
It’s about making the hurt worth it.

Turn on the news.
Forty-five seconds of human horror.
Then look left.
There’s someone there that makes you want to keep going.

That’s life.

That’s the deal.

We’re not here for easy.
We’re not here for safe.
We’re here because this moment is the only one we get.

When the aliens dig up our ruins, they won’t know who I loved.
Who I failed.
What it felt like to stand still and finally stop running.

But I’ll know.

And that’s enough.

I told a friend once:

Giving love is easy. Accepting it is hard.

Because accepting it means stopping.
Standing still.
Letting someone catch up to you.
Letting someone see you.

And maybe that’s why I keep running.
Because I’m scared the bad shit will catch me.

But maybe that’s the price.
Maybe you’ve got to let it catch you—

—so the good can too.