I ran right out the front door and down the street. I ran with my chest on fire, with tears streaming down my cheeks. I ran past the school where kids mocked me when I slipped and said al-jabr instead of algebra in math class. They thought I was too dumb to pronounce it correctly.

“Al-jabr” means the reunion of broken parts, Boba had taught me. It was a term first used for broken bones, then later to describe a mathematical equation.

I was still a floating variable, the x that stood alone and undefined. If Mom left me now, I didn’t see how I could survive. I certainly wouldn’t go back to Everett and Janet. I pressed the heels of my hands against my temples trying to hold myself together.

“Aryana!” Mom cried, breathless and flushed. She had caught up with me.

“You want to leave me!” I’d shouted. I watched her closely, without her noticing. I’d seen the exhaustion, the frustration, the resentment in her face. I knew there were moments she regretted making me her problem. I had long wondered if I might one day find that social worker sitting in our living room ready to cart me off to a new home.

“No, no. Not at all! I will not leave you!” she said, kneeling in the grass. “I will only go if you go with me. That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

I leaned against her. When we could breathe, we stood and walked home.

Two months later, we packed our bags and boarded a plane with our American passports. We spent the next four years in three different countries, with side excursions on different continents. In the moments when my heart opened to God, I thanked Him for designing this way for me to disappear and exist, this chance to become an American without living under an American microscope.

My world had swerved from beautiful to punishing and back again.

I have run along the turquoise Bosphorus and with my back to the snowcapped Dolomites. I have circled the Mitad del Mundo and explored the streets of Cairo. It was on the banks of the Nile, realizing that a river must flow in one direction if it wants to reunite with the sea, that I decided I would leave my old name and my old world behind me.

I run because of all I have seen. I run despite all I have seen. I run against the wind, and sometimes I run with it. I run planned and unplanned routes. I measure my distance and run full miles, whether four or five or eight, never leaving a fraction on the ground.

I check my phone once more. No messages, which means the woman I operated on today is doing well—as well as can be expected for a kindergarten teacher whose body has become home to a cancer.