“You know”, said the wide-eyed man, raising his voice above the thudding music as he leant back against the sweat- damp wall and regarded me, awestruck: “people like you are like God to me…”
I took a drag of my cigarette and regarded my teenage self, stunned. It was dizzying: the drinks we’d drunk, the lines we’d snorted and finally, the pill I’d washed down with tepid water from the bottle in my hand. I could feel it working now; a warm buzz, like adrenaline, starting in the pit of my stomach and radiating through my limbs like soothing fire. Stubbing out the cigarette, I turned from the man and ran to the toilets, pushing my way through the crowds to a soiled cubicle with a broken door, which I managed to close before turning and vomiting into the toilet bowl. Then I was walking back to the dance-floor. Walking, floating, beatific; jaw quivering, eyes rolling, beaming at the rapture-flooded beauty of it all: this club with its pounding music lifting me higher, my hands in the air, encircled by devotion, ecstasy filling me up till I felt like I might die…
I’m not proud of the life I fell into in that strange time at the end of my teenage years. But I have enough compassion for my younger self to forgive myself for what was probably inevitable. For we are all shaped by our childhoods, and the measure of a person is not in how far they fall, but in how they pick themselves up afterwards. I fell a long way, and when I realised I could fall no further, I clawed my way back to the real world, to real life, and I did it alone: without friends or family, without doctors or counsellors or support groups.
“Well, you know what they say about runners” said a friend here in Newbridge the other day over coffee and cupcakes as we discussed our shared love of the activity “they’re always running from something!”.
“I’m definitely running from something”, I laughed, as I thought about how even before I began to run, I loved it for what it represented to me: freedom, escape, the solitary pursuit of striving to be faster, better, stronger.
Usually when I begin an early-morning run, I feel drained and sluggish, my muscles tired and sore and my limbs heavy. But what I love most about running longer distances is that if you push yourself through those first few kilometres, past the aches and stitches and leaden limbs, your body just takes over – endorphins and adrenaline flood your system and suddenly you are running – really running – and you feel powerful and strong and muscular and invincible.
Personally, I don’t think there is anything wrong with running from the past. I have faced my demons and won. I am a stronger, better, more grounded person for it. And if I am running from the past, then I must surely be sprinting towards the future. And the future is a joyous place, filled with light and life, with fun and happiness and with the dazzling laughter of children.
(summer of '94... we were the Beautiful People)
