I woke up running, my feet pounding the road in a dead sprint. A gut wrenching, soul crushing fear prevented me from stopping, though I knew not from what I was fleeing.
As I sped along the road, I noticed people standing along the side of it. Some of them angry, some of them sad, some of them completely oblivious to and unconcerned about me. I don’t know how long I had been running, how long I would have to run or where I needed to run to. The only thing I knew for sure was this: If I stopped, I’d die. Maybe worse than death; the savage capabilities of my pursuer were completely unknown to me, and that in and of itself was enough to make my blood run cold.
I noticed myself slowing down. The spike of fear brought on by that realization fueled a surge of adrenaline, empowering my aching, swollen legs to propel me along at their previous break neck pace.
As I continued passing people along the way, I noticed something odd about some of the people. Every few miles of my terror induced marathon I would pass someone trying to wave me down and pointing behind me at whatever was chasing me. I had no time to heed them, or find out what they were saying. The smallest distraction could prove fatal. But over time I couldn’t help but notice them as I passed by them, and there was something about them that was the same over and over again. Then it hit me, it was their eyes, bright and piercing, and the way they all looked at me, they seemed to know me, like they understood exactly what I was experiencing. Yet they didn’t seem at all concerned!
I didn’t know how much longer I would make it at this pace. No matter how far I ran or how fast I sped along the way, the nameless fear at my back got no further away. I could see another of these familiar strangers in the distance ahead of me. She stood calmly, her knowing eyes absorbing me. She motioned for me to slow down, to stop. When I came within maybe 3 meters of her, I looked into her eyes. Time seemed to distort somehow. I was still running at my manic pace, but I was getting no closer to her, and my body seemed to be working on its own without my direction.
Her lips twitched in a half smile that seemed to say “come on, child, stop and face it, you know what it is, you know what it wants, you know you have to…”. Suddenly, time snapped back into place. Partly from exhaustion, partly from some deep inner desire to trust this woman, I half stopped, half tripped and fell hard onto the ground.
Suddenly overwhelmed, I curled up into a ball at her feet and waited to be devoured by the monster. I knew it was waiting behind me for just this moment of weakness to finally arrive. I was blind with fear and could hear nothing but the sound of my blood roaring in my ears. My heart hammering in my chest like a war drum, visibly rocking my entire body. Still I waited, eyes shut tight for the inevitable.
After maybe 15 seconds that felt like a lifetime, I slowly opened my eyes. The woman was still standing there in front of me. I had landed right at her feet when I fell. She looked at me with that same soft, knowing expression and stretched out her hand to help me up. Taking it, I slowly got to me feet, still aware that the monster was behind me, waiting. I didn’t understand why I was not a mangled pile of gore on the road yet, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around to look and see what it was that was chasing me either.
If I looked, that would be the end. I looked to the woman for help, but she just smiled and motioned for me to turn around. I started to cry. Crying with exhaustion, fear, pain from the running I had just done, from frustration that this woman did not care that my life was in danger, that the one person in this moment who could help me was just standing there, doing nothing to save me.
I was utterly broken. She took my by the shoulders and looked into my eyes. Wiping away my tears, she firmly communicated to me that I needed to turn around. She was stronger than me, and even though she could have, she did not force me to turn. She just stood with me. I wondered if the presence of this woman was preventing whatever was after me from consuming me. Was she some magical being that the forces of darkness could not come near?
She seemed to know what I was thinking. She smiled a little bigger and shook her head, mirth clear on her face. Then she frowned and took one of my hands in hers and squeezed it. She put her other hand on my shoulder and nodded at me reassuringly. I trembled, knowing that I had no choice but to trust her. A tear rolled down my cheek and I bit my lip, fighting the paralyzing fear trying to take me over.
Slowly I turned, eyes shut again, to face my pursuer. I took a deep breath and held it…then blew it out, snapping my eyes open to finally confront…myself. I blinked. My self smiled. I could see in myself everything about me that I loved, and also what I hated. Every failure was etched on my naked body. Every kind word I had ever said was inlaid on the skin of my self. I was beautiful. And terrible. A god in form and function, worthy of love and fear. I feared my self because I did not understand it, even though it was me, it was my self.
I turned to look at the woman, she smiled and beckoned my self and I to follow her. We did, and so began the most incredible relationship of my life. The relationship of me with myself. I hurt my self a lot, and yet I was scared that my self would hurt me. Every nasty thing I did to my self, I projected onto my self, expecting and fearing my self as if my self did those nasty things to me. But everything I did to myself that was nice was reciprocated.
We began to get to know each other, and became an unstoppable force. We decided that we must use our partnership to change the world, and so, we set forth on our way, caring for each other and everyone we came in contact with. Some people hurt us, but we nourished each other back to health. The closer my self and I got to each other, the closer we got to the All in all, until eventually, we ended up together on a road. We didn’t know where we were, but we waited, because we knew that good things come to those who wait. Before long two people came tearing down the road toward us, as if they were running for their lives, one trying to outrun the other. We smiled, and looked at them, we knew how they felt, we knew what must be done.