They say all dreams are wish fulfilment. My dreams have become increasingly focused lately, the same theme again and again.
I am running. Through the forest, around the field I used to run on regularly, through crowded streets where I kick off my shoes and start running barefoot and dodging the broken glass, along beaches, panting up hills then gratefully letting gravity work down the hills, across roads where I try to dodge cars, even through the snow. In the morning when it’s peaceful and imbued with a zen-like sense of stillness, with other people, some who I know some who I don’t, alone, at night, carrying my child, always just running and running and running.
Or I am climbing. I used to work in Wales as a rock climbing instructor and I am there again, or I’m places I don’t recognise. Sometimes I am just climbing up buildings, or over walls.
Or I am jumping off the walls and buildings, I climb up, then I jump back to Earth.
Or I am fighting. Throwing punches and kicks, feeling the air knocked out of my insides, tasting blood, even feeling bones breaking, but still punching, elbowing and kicking back. However hurt I am, I am still punching back.
Sometimes I am dancing. Spinning and jumping around in a state of perfect bliss. Dancing is my happy place. Drunk, sober, with my friends. Dancing has always made me happy.
I’m playing football, muddy but happy. I am playing rounders with my child in the sunshine at Jesus Green. I am playing basketball and laughing. Just throwing myself around and feeling alive.
Or I am swimming - always in the sea though, not the pool which is not my reality. Reality has been the pool, up and down, up and down in the chlorine.
Or I am cycling, hot and happy, riding straight into the wind, or the dry sun, or the rain, fast, tired and content.
But mostly I am running.
This is what I am dreaming of, night in, night out. I am running. Pounding my feet like a heartbeat into the ground and running.
