The Number Habit

E l e v e n

It had been a couple of days since I had whined and cried out in pain and self-sorrow; I had calmed down since then, distracting and soothing the hurtful happenings with activities like sports. 'Sports', previously I would never had claimed that sports was a way to ease the problems; I would hide and try to disappear whenever someone even mentioned the word. However, unlike my younger reaction, I asked for permission to go for a run. My parents were mildly surprised, smiling warmly as the skin around their eyes creased in excitement, it would be a problematic and a catastrophic idea to even attempt to get me out of the house when I was immersing myself in interesting activities such as writing. Furthermore, for me to voluntarily leave the comfort of my home just to run was an unusual situation- I had done this before but that was a year prior when I ran multiple kilometres for charity- however, I was not doing anything of that sort. I was just running to distract me, it was a fun activity; leaving my home at evening hours to come back only after dark, the area I lived in was a relatively quiet area, not many left their homes after the later hours. They were the conservative sort, hushed and withdrawn they led private lives full of uninteresting filler content. I cared little of what they thought and I never conversed with them, no polite nods of good morning just blatant ignorance.