Full Circle

Ascent

I speed through the forest preserve and head straight up the mountain, my angry footsteps crushing dry branches underfoot. I am bitter, hurt. Broken just like these fragile sticks that once flourished. As the weighty memories relentlessly dig in with their sharpened claws, I try shaking them off by kicking up my pace yet another notch, furiously pumping my arms as if propelling myself further from harsh reality. I am still my mother's daughter: fierce fighter, stubborn, proud.

"I hate it here!" I scream. No one is within earshot to hear my unbridled, unhinged rant. The sane avoid the area because its razor-thin trails, with their precipitously steep drop-offs, are outliers. Unsuitable for all but the most experienced hikers, they fall well outside the bounds of most athletes' spheres of safety. Few walk away unscathed or even alive after 100-foot plunges from a cliff. Clearly, this was a very stupid idea.

"You brought me to this desolate hellhole, then abandoned me. I'm a caged animal! I hate you forever!" I grant myself the rare luxury of spewing out venomous words only because Mother Nature, perpetually sworn to secrecy, will hold them in strict confidence.

When the drama finally stops me dead in my tracks, I concede defeat. The miraculous catharsis I hoped for never shows up, so I reluctantly turn around, begin my slow descent.

And when my salt-stained SUV (a gas-guzzling vehicle I neither needed nor wanted before moving here) is finally within sight, naturally I slip on a patch of black ice and violently twist my left ankle. Waves of searing pain bring frustrated tears to my swollen eyes.

It figures. I knew those vitriolic words would catch up with me, though I hadn't expected it so soon. I make my way back to the sorry, cramped studio that holds what little I have left. There, I spend the rest of the night in resentful solitude, an enormous bag of frozen peas precariously perched on top of my elevated ankle. As if it weren't already frigid enough around here.