Invincible

INVINCIBLE

	The darkness always had a certain affect on me, there was 
nothing I loved better than a long run after midnight.  But I 
rarely got the chance, considering that I was 15 at the time and
 my parents were a bit nervous about letting me out that late at
 night.  We had finally compromised.  My parents agreed to let me
 out at midnight, but only if I promised to be home in an hour.

	I suppose that there were many times that I could have
 seriously hurt myself, fallen in a gopher hole and twisted my
 ankle.  It was the praries of Canada after all.  Any number of
 strange rocks or holes could have hidden beneath the grass.  But
 that was all part of the thrill.  When I was running it was 
unlike any other feeling in the world.  A certain part of me 
always believed that I had never hurt myself because I was 
special.  I was the girl who dared to run at night.  I was 
invincible.


	So many people told me I was crazy for running at dark, 
but they never really understood. When I ran at night I felt like 
I blended in, like I was part of the air, the wind, the ground 
beneath my feet.  Soon I was no longer running, I was flying.  
Away from my thoughts, my pains and my worries.   When I ran I 
was free, and I belonged there.

	It doesn’t really matter who I am, or what I look like, 
it always seemed irrelevant to me.  The only times I ever looked 
in a mirror was to patch up various scrapes or other wounds 
usually caused by unnoticed tree branches.  Of course I’m sure 
that disturbed some people, mostly my parents.  I suppose I 
seemed odd, perhaps a little wild.  But none of them had bothered 
to look deeper, past my unbrushed hair and my desperate desire to 
run after dark.

	But that night something was different.  It was like 
there was something strange in the air and I couldn’t figure out 
what it was, but I shrugged off the strange feeling and began to 
run, my feet falling against the cold ashphalt, my body becoming 
one with the air around me.  The soft earth pounded beneath my 
feet as I turned off the road onto a soft grassy field.  I began 
to reach that feeling, the feeling that makes you think that 
you’re feet have actually left the ground and you’re flying. 
 Then suddenly my foot caught itself in a gopher hole and I 
really was flying.  I would have barely noticed if it weren’t for 
the sudden feeling of falling.

	In those few seconds my mind filled with sudden panic as 
the ground rushed up and slammed against my body.  Pain seemed to 
shoot through every inch of my body.  I blinked slowly, clearing 
my vision.

	I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was that fall 
that changed my life.  My opinions on the world, on life and on 
people  all changed that night.  As I pulled myself up off the 
ground and wiped away the blood and dirt I realized something.  I
realized that I wasn’t invincible, that my late night ritual was
 merely something that set me apart, but it didn’t make me any 
luckier, stronger or better than anyone else.  Small tears began
 to roll down my cheeks, not from the pain of my torn skin, but 
from the pain of realization.

	

For so long I had believed that everyone thought I was different 
because I was.  I thought that in some way I was a different sort 
of person than they were.  But looking down at the spot where I 
had fallen I realized that all this time the only thing that had 
made me different was my pretending that I was.  I wasn’t 
invinsible or special.  I was just an ordinary 15 year old girl.

	I limped home that night and bandaged my wounds.  Sleep 
soon over took me.  When I woke up the next morning the first 
thing I did was look in the mirror.  As I looked, I saw the face 
of an average teenage girl.  Not beautiful, but definatly not 
ugly.  I smiled softly to myself and picked up the hairbrush 
gently brushing the tangles and leaves out of my hair.
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