taking care. p4.

The making of a decision is a wonderful thing, especially if it propels much needed change. I decided to move out of my parents house, with the worried voice of my mother still echoing after my exit. My next move was to South Korea, for the summer. My mother's worried voice was still there, her tight hug and tears ushering me onto the plane.

And though navigating through her worry was, well, really annoying, her worry came from love. Those people that say those catchy things that people repeat, especially mothers, always say "a mother's love...You just won't understand until you're a mother"...She just wanted to take care of me, keep me safe and healthy, and leaving the house after dark to run, or to move to a less than safe part of town, or fly across the ocean...These conditions, to my mom, were not very manageable.

I was in my little bitty apartment in Korea, watching Six Feet under, when my running walls came down. I had started watching the series while there, and though I was in a different country with all kinds of sights and smells, the beast of laziness was always knocking at my fake wood front door. Weight had begun to disappear, because of diet, mostly vegetables and rice, and because I was able to walk everywhere. The weight was easy; it was the moving my ass part when I didn't have to that I was having trouble with. I didn't have to be at work until four most afternoons. This meant I could sleep in, take mid-morning naps, which I happen to love, venture over to the refrigerator for sustenance eventually, and wander over to the school where I worked somewhere around 3:30 in the afternoon. On a certain summer day, living the lazy life, I watched as Ruth was in the kitchen, scolding her son Nate. He was having a hard time with life, and his mother, the care taker, was losing her patience. The synopsis of the conversation was this: "I am sorry things are hard. I am sorry they aren't going your way. But you are the only one that can take care of yourself. Stop drinking beer for breakfast". She didn't actually say the beer thing, but it would have been cool if she did.

This scene was not monumental. There wasn't anything that clever or ground breaking about her words. But something about being where I was, with NOTHING in the way of me taking care of myself, STUCK. If I couldn't do it there, with NO stress, NO real responsibility, NO children or worries, no extra weight to bog me down, no lack of sleep (quite the opposite, actually) and no multiple job action, then when would I be able to take the initiative to take care of myself? When I have a million other things to juggle and not enough time to do half of the things that need to be done in a day? Not likely.

I laced up my shoes that very minute. I bolted out the door. And I ran.