Day 20

‘Je suis,’ the voice in my ear says.

Without pausing for thought, I repeat it out loud as I run. ‘I am.’

I am, I echo in my thoughts. The rest of the podcast is lost on me as I marvel at this simple sentence.

I am.

I burst out laughing in the deserted warehouse park where I normally work. I am. I truly am here, alive. 

I have been spending a lot of time in my head since lockdown began. I have thought of who I was and I have considered who I will be. But I have rarely thought of the present. This, now, is a transient time. It is out of life and I have treated it as such. 

But it is also part of life. It is now. It is the present. And I am in it, breathing, feeling, living.

I run up the steep mound sheltering the hotel from the ugly warehouses and yelp in joy at the top. I extend my arms wide open to I careen down the mound, my legs losing control. And I carry on running as the word ‘river’ in the podcast rings in my ears.