Inside Me

Sometimes I just run away.  A few times a week it is in the form of literally lacing up and running down the sidewalk.  But right now it's just in the form of leaving on the premise of laundry or dishes or something-believable and then ending here.  On the couch in the dark in my thoughts.  Breathing deeply and feeling the oxygen reach to the very bottom of my lungs.  Stretching slowly and spreading out into the edges of me.  Sometimes my Inside-Me-ness shrivels under the demands, small but incessant.  It pulls back from the edges of my skin and steadily shrinking away from the chaos, the busy, the juggling of everything and everyone.  Until my Inside-Me-ness finds itself occupying very little of Actual Me, who is now filled to the brim with Everyone-Else-Who-Needs-Me and I start to feel a little sad, a little empty.  And I run away, to be sad and empty for a bit.  And to let my Inside-Me-ness unfurl itself back into the real estate it was made for.