Sometimes penguins feel like the only way out.
stuck in circumstances
These last couple months have been hard and exhausting. Not because I’ve lost my way in my head, but because circumstances have drawn hard lines around me. Recovery…….the kind of timelines that refuse to bend to what I want, no matter how stubborn I am. And let me tell you, being stuck in circumstances makes you feel like you’re pressing your face against a window, watching the whole world run while you stand still.
the fog of medication
The fog of medication became its own kind of weather system. Some days I’m drifting through it, sluggish, heavy-eyed, like I’m trying to swim through clouds, and my shoulders and biceps scream from carrying the shifted weight, aching so fiercely I can barely lift my arms above my head. Every movement feels like a fight, every attempt at sleep sabotaged by the deep relentless pain of muscles asked to do more than they were ever meant to. Other times it flips on me and I’m wired at two in the morning, pacing the house in the dark. Back and forth on the walker, kitchen to living room, window to hallway, wearing a groove in the floorboards like some restless lion in a zoo. I tell myself, “This is temporary, this is healing.” But when you’re walking in circles at 2:00 a.m. for the fifth night in a row, temporary feels like forever.
antarctica at 2 a.m.
And in those wide-awake hours, my brain goes places; wild places. The other night I convinced myself that what I really need is a National Geographic trip to Antarctica. Yes, Antarctica. I imagined myself bundled in a parka, trudging across endless sheets of ice that cracked under each step, penguins waddling alongside like nosy neighbors, and breathing in air so sharp it sliced through me, like a slap that somehow felt like freedom. Like if I can’t move here, maybe I should just move to the literal end of the world. My credit card is lucky I didn’t hit “Book Now.” At least not yet, but I’m convinced I will.
the ache to run
The truth is, I don’t actually want to escape my life. I want to escape this stuck version of it. The restless pacing, the slowed-down body, the waiting. Sarah Reeves has a song called Runaway, and even if I didn’t plan to, I keep living inside her chorus. Because that’s what this feels like: an ache to bolt. Not because I’m ungrateful or giving up. But because there’s fire inside me and nowhere for it to go.
hunger in the waiting
And here’s what I’ve realized: stir-crazy is not always a bad thing. It’s hunger. It’s proof I’m still alive enough to want more. Still stubborn enough to picture Antarctica in the middle of the night, because some part of me refuses to believe this cage is forever. Waiting shows up in other ways too; the kind that has nothing to do with muscles or bone. The long stretches where you linger in the space between silence and possibility. It’s its own kind of waiting; less bruise, more a secret pulse that makes the heart restless in ways words can’t quite touch.That runaway energy inside me is the same energy that carried me through weight loss, through CrossFit, through every storm I thought might tear me in two. It’s the same heartbeat that says, “Not yet, but soon.”
when the doors open
So for now, I pace. I write. I dream of penguins and ice shelves and open roads. And I wait for the moment the door finally opens.
Because when it does, I won’t tiptoe back into my life. I’ll run.
