The third option

There is a tornado warning, so naturally Sam and I go to the Quarry. I dare those stormy clouds to do their worst, but they drift off in the breeze to wreak havoc in a neighbouring city. Having failed at subduing my cantankerous mood with bad weather, I decide to run into the dark muggy forest in hopes of being kidnapped by monsters or eaten by wild beasts.

In the past I have found several ways to self harm. I have been drugged but that made me numb in a way that I couldn't live with. Recently I made myself a solemn promise. I am welcome to kill myself, but the only means I am allowed to do this is to run myself to death. In my darkest moods, I run and pray for my broken heart to burst into fragments or my sobbing lungs to collapse in on themselves. I have never succeeded [obviously], either the adrenaline lifts me out enough to get a brighter perspective or the energy from throwing up from exertion leaves me too tired to care anymore. Those were the only two outcomes that I had experienced from this ingenious plan. I had never even considered the possibility of a third. Until last night.

As I said, my mood was fowl and I wore my headphones so that I didn't have to interact with the dog walkers that frequent the place. Not that there were many - who comes to a wide open space during a tornado? Sam and I are thundering along the path into the forest area. There are really no people in this part. Sam loves it here. The forest is dark and dripping with humidity and mystery. He dives in and comes out several minutes later covered in mud and smelling awful. I am sure that he consorts with orks and bridge trolls while he is in there, but he won't say. And it's really none of my business.

We come to the end of the forest path. There is a gate to stop motorized traffic, a bridge up ahead, but between the forest and the bridge is a wetland. A mosquito infested, mud swamp laden wetland. It's a beautiful wild place when it is sunny, it is a nightmare when it is overcast and wet. It was overcast and wet. I stood at the low gate deciding whether or not the run was torture enough or if I should submit myself to bug bites and sloppy shoes, Tori Amos blaring in my ears that she was worth coming home to. Was I worth coming home to? Where was Sam? Off swapping stories with goblins, likely. I was leaning towards forgoing the swampland, shifting my weight to the ball of my right foot in preparation to pivot, when there was a disturbance in the foliage up ahead, about 10 feet from me. A monster come to eat me? Finally!!! But no, not a monster. A deer. Smallish. A fawn? No, a doe. And out of the bushes after her, not one, but two tiny, wobbly legged fawns. I am sure that in this crazy world there are people whose hearts don't skip for tiny new born creatures. I am not one of those people. Tori warbled that she only sleeps with butterflies and I stood there wide eyed, mouth agape. They were gone in an instant and even when i ran into the swamp and leaned over the bridge to scour the tall grass, there was no sign of them ever having been there. Making me wonder, like that time with the falling meteorite, if I had imagined the whole thing.

Then Sam was there, looking at me with concerned eyes, perhaps afraid that I might jump. I kiss him on the forehead, then repel from the Ork stench and realize I am standing ankle deep in swamp mud and being eaten alive my mosquitoes. We high tail it out of there and I skip over parading snails and try unsuccessfully to catch a baby toad that is hopping on the path.

By the time we get to the limestone pond where Sam washes off the stench of fantasy creatures, the somber clouds and my dark mood have both lifted. And when we climb in the car, permeating the upholstery with the smell of earth, I check my cell phone and am not sad that there are no new messages - because the boy of complex description is at work and there is no one else I want to hear from right now. Progress, I think.