Just a boy with strength and youth. He filled his days will adventure and exploring. He was full of careless bliss, running through the sun-filled pastures, and the tall blades of grass were his hidden playground. He had the world at his fingertips.

He didn’t know how fast it’d all disappear.

Strength beyond compare. Skills, grapple, maneuverability, and brawn came naturally. Run for fun faster than the rest. Always disappointed in second place. Shoot for first, nothing less. You push yourself and never stop. The pressures are tremendous to be the best.

So make your plan to escape.

Black thick unkempt curls and a need for speed. Muscle cars and motorcycles. The speed was a rush, a distraction from the transformation coming faster than you could have known, faster than you wanted. A boy no more but now a man.

You rally around your small town, trying to find the feeling you once had. It wasn’t on the main street or the bluffs overlooking the town anymore. You couldn’t find it on the football field or on the mat. It was gone. You put the pasture behind you and never went back. You never ran through her tall grass again.

Now you longed for the days that stretched far into the night and went by too fast. Bonfires with your friends, telling stories you’ve heard a hundred times, and dirt road drives. Sharing a beer on the tailgate, finding joy in the routine of farm chores and the pasture… running forever, and never getting tired. You miss that feeling. The feeling of refreshment and freedom in a single act of breathing in her space.

So you leave it all behind. Try to find something else to fill the hole inside you. Sometimes you think you have something to give you that joy again. But it never lasts.

You had a few kids and made a life. Said too many final goodbyes to your childhood friends. You make your phone calls and do what you can to be okay. But still… You don’t feel whole. The people in your life notice something is off. Still, you say you’re fine. They bring up your history and how proud they are of you, but you say you don’t care anymore.

You made plans to escape back then from that life and ran away to create a new life far away. The truth is you would do anything to go back. Back to your old man’s stories, rules, and routines. Those early morning practices and your buddies cruising Main Street and trying to get lost on a dirt road. What you’d do to go back to that pastures and run… running forever without fatigue. To feel your legs go on and on the way they could before you had to take on the world. Just to be without the worry, you have now. To be there again as the boy, young and fast in her tall grass, free.

You say that you’re fine. You say those days don’t matter now. But I know that those days matter because I am the same way. We are always fine even if we are not to the outside world.

I flew my pictures away. I don’t think about those days anymore when I had so many choices. I closed my eyes to the days I could pick my direction, and my body didn’t hurt. I’d rather not look back at all that. I said I was fine, which also didn’t matter to me. But I, too, know the truth.

We both can’t go back. We’re both weary now, and too many have passed away… We know more will. It’s torment to think about all the goodbyes we still have to say. It’s an affliction to our hearts to know those days are gone forever, and we will be too.

Sk