Then one day, the answer clicked in my brain. Real pain is not from hurting yourself like breaking an arm or leg. Sure, it hurts like a motherfucker, but that pain is temporary, the wound will heal, and you’ll move on like it never happened.

Real pain lies in what’s in your head, the mental scars people imprint on you or the ones you inflict on yourself. My mental scarring is at war with my mind. Most days, my mind wins and other days it loses. When it loses, that’s when I down liquor like it’s water. Today, I’m losing the war.

My chest tightens like a snake is squeezing it, and my heart beats faster than a drummer at a concert. My mind is fucking my brain sideways scissors style.

Gunpowder invades my nostrils, and I rub my nose until it’s sore.

Breathe, Gunner. You smell musky rain, not gunpowder.

A revolver fires off in my ear like a bomb.

Relax. You’re running.

Gray brain matter splatters across the pale white walls. A hole the size of a grapefruit indents his forehead as blood gushes down his face, and his eyes roll into the back of his head.

It’ll pass, you’re safe, you’re in the Bedford Hills neighborhood, not in his basement . . .

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

I’m trying to gather my thoughts.

My mind won’t win; I won’t let it.

Keep running, switch gears, and focus on something else.

I love running like I love pussy and liquor.

I fell in love with running when I was in high school. Not to toot my own horn, but I was the best on the track team, which is how I scored a full ride to NYU.

I like the way my heart beats against my ribcage, and the way endorphins course through my veins, giving me that runner’s high.

God, I fucking love running.

I run to forget shit. Running isn’t helping me today.

I’m not about to blab my mouth to Hannah about me suffering from dissociation again. Because she’s going to dope me up on antipsychotics or antidepressants like she did when I first started therapy, and that shit had me feeling like someone took a spoon and scoop my soul out of my body.

I don’t want a repeat of that shit show.

It’s bad enough I float around like an empty vessel, but to take those drugs makes me feel alive as a vegetable.

No matter how much I fuck and drink, it doesn’t make me feel whole. It will take a shit-ton of glue to piece my soul together. So I run until my ugly-ass feet are bruised and blue, hoping to outrun my demons, hoping the rain washes away my sins.