Running
Burt Barr, The mile / Running Time 7:25, 2003
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Okay so you don’t get why I take the time
to run my fat ass for an hour each morning
instead of doing something meaningful with my life.
Like writing books or changing
the world. Well let me tell you
what is meaningful to me. Meaningful is
waking up in the morning knowing
I don’t have to regret last night. Meaningful
means my twelve year old daughter has never seen me
falling down drunk. Means that she won’t
find me in the bathroom with a razor
blade in one hand and an empty bottle
in the other. Meaningful means she won’t have to stitch me
up from the damage I have done to myself. There will be no
phone calls to 911 for the stupid shit
I have done. No more hugging
the toilet from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. puking
out last night’s poison until nothing but piss colored
bile heaves from my gut in puddles the size
of a silver dollar. No more waking up
with my tongue swollen like a filthy
gym sock. Parched. Meaningful
means that whatever I write
I can look at the next day and the next day and the next day.
Even this. I’ll look at this tomorrow and not
give a fuck that I wrote it. I don’t have to
keep it locked in a trunk in the garage afraid
if I open it I’ll slip on the puke, piss and vile 100 proof
vat of tears and rage. Stupid fucked-up shit. You want
to know why I choose to run instead of making something
more of myself than the sum of my sobriety and my responsibilities.
I’ll tell you why because running keeps me
from going downtown to score
anything that will make me feel real good until
I snap out of it and feel real bad. Because
I really would take anything just to feel
the push of the envelope
but instead I push
my legs, fill myself with sweat and endorphins instead
of needles and pills and bottles of booze and beer and cigarettes
and weed. Because I want it. I want
all of it so I have to
run it out of me, let my legs carry me
through each day. Let me tell you what. I want to get fucked
up. I wanted it yesterday. I wanted it five minutes ago.
I want it now. I’ll want it tomorrow. That’s what being a drunk
and an addict is all about it. It never goes away.
Don’t get me wrong. I like it. I love getting wasted.
It’s my specialty. I’m really good at it. I like to feel
the burn of scotch chugging down my throat til I tip
the bottle, suck down the last drop, lick the rim, then drive
drunk to the liquor store for another bottle
because driving drunk is part of the thrill. I’m not going to lie
to you. I’ve driven drunk.
Really drunk. I talked my way out of jail more times
than I could count. I used my nine
lives. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like
the feel of a sharp needle sliding into
my vein, the burn of hot cooked dope and the flood
of oblivion that pushes through me like a thick black
velvet hammer. Yes, I like to
get hammered. And yes, I would say
hell yes to the crack pipe when it’s offered to me, to the line
of white powder not even caring what kind of white powder it is.
Just so I can snort it up my nose, feel
the burn, feel it stop
my brain from being on on on
my heart from being on on on
my pain from being on on on.
Fuck pain. It’s a joke.
The other day I thought how good it must feel
to be like Jimi Hendrix, so high I die
choking on my own puke, and when I told you
you almost puked with disgust. Go ahead
be disgusted. It is
disgusting. But it is
the truth. This is how it goes. I am
a junkie. I am
a drunk. I am
a person who would pour my body
so full of poison I’d become my own personal Chernobyl
if I didn’t stop myself, if I didn’t run
my body into the ground to stop it
from destroying itself, if I didn’t have
that miracle girl who grew inside this body
of mine (how could that have even happened?)
and who needs to wake up and find her mom
standing in the kitchen making breakfast not
lying shit faced and passed out in her own vomit on the bed.
Because in all honesty I have spent way too much of my life
passed out shitfaced in my own vomit. I don’t miss that part.
When I imagine my daughter
finding me like that I hate myself for being
able to picture it so clearly but
love myself for knowing I have never and will never
let it happen. So have I
answered your question, told you why
I run for miles each day? I run my body
pure. I run my body til it hurts from being pushed
so I can taste the edge without
pushing a needle into my arm. I run myself
clean and make my own drugs
with my body. But don’t you
ever think that I don’t want to get high
every minute of my life. Don’t you ever think
that anything is more important than
not doing it, than waking up sober
every remaining moment of my life knowing
I am still in control and I haven’t
fucked this whole thing up.