thirty-six months

Three years ago on the fourth of July, right around my brother's wedding, I laced on my running schoes at about midnight, snuck out the backdoor, and went on my usual nightly run. I was running into a thunderstorm, so there was lightning all over the western horizon, and the air was really electric, but the rain was still far away, so it was perfectly still except for the rolls of thunder. Behind me, the sky was this really beautiful indigo, and every few seconds a huge plume of pyrotechnics would explode, further contrasting the clear horizon with its dark, cloudy inverse.

And I ran into the storm and away from the fireworks in the still darkness, and it was before the real problems with bulimia (or I guess when they were right beginning), and it was before I'd really gone out with any boy, before I met Josh, and I hadn't cut in six months or so, and it was before I had begun to think about college. I had no idea what was in front of me, but I existed perfectly in that moment, caught between two kinds of beauty, both deadly, in the still stasis in the middle.

I like that memory. I can imagine my silhouette clearly, dark against the lightning, dark against the sparks, dark against the night.