We ran until we heard screaming, and then we turned around and ran faster in the other direction. We ran, and I imagined us being attacked by guard dogs or maybe being stopped by security and then being made subject to painful psychological experiments. But none of that happened.
No one even saw us, and we didn't see anyone else, and that's what made it all so eerie. It was just us and the snow and the fog and a campus full of strange buildings with names like \music therapy"" and ""juvenile treatment center.""
We knew we weren't supposed to be there, but it wasn't until we were on the way out that we saw the ""no trespassing"" signs we'd missed on the way in'that's what happens when you're lost in the moment.
You can't hate yourself when you're lost in the moment, and I was happy to be lost. I'd gone running to get lost, and Pete said our run was sort of like an allegory for life.
We were running and getting lost and nervous and exhausted, but we knew it was all going to work out. ""We're going to end up at home,"" Pete said, and he was right.
Originally, we'd met on the porch in shorts and long sleeve shirts, and we'd smiled but didn't say anything, knowing the previous night was heavy on each other's mind. And then we ran, knowing we'd come back, but hoping to be a little different then.
We ran and ran, and I was not yet lost when we passed the governor's mansion, but then we ran further, and by the time we reached Governor's Island the only thing on my mind was the island itself. Then, somehow we ended up on the campus of the Mendota Mental Health Institute.
We ended up in a place we'd never been to and a place we didn't know how to get back from. We'd taken so many turns on so many roads that it was difficult to know north from south, and we had to guess a few times, but we got home.
We took familiar roads home, and I wasn't so lost in the moment then. But it's not so easy to lose yourself in the familiar.
Instead, the familiar lends itself to wandering thoughts, and the familiar had me drifting from the allegory to the mental institution to the five hours from the previous night that I couldn't remember and would never get back. My thoughts wandered, but I wasn't hating myself so much anymore. I was lucky.
I'm sure some people hate themselves for years, and it's hard to know it until you hear them screaming, and then you run, but you can't always get away, because sometimes guard dogs really do chase you down.
And sometimes you forget all about the people who are living in the mental health institution or you forget how the 17th mile of a run feels when it's bad or how it feels when it's good.
Life is all about remembering the things you should have never forgotten, and I don't know quite how that fits into the allegory, and I'm not too worried about trying to figure it out. I'm just worried I'm going to forget it.
andrewmiller@students.wisc.edu
