Running from the Bull

The alarm screamed at 4:30 AM. Again. David rolled over, his hand instinctively reaching for the empty side of the bed. Three months since Sarah left, and the muscle memory hadn't faded.

He dragged himself to the bathroom mirror. Another gray hair sprouted at his temple. He's been pulling them out for years, but they're winning now. At forty-seven, with a divorce pending and a portfolio down forty percent, David felt like a zombie moving through his own life.

He laced up his running shoes and slipped out into the predawn darkness. Running used to be his escape—six miles before the market opened, clearing his mind, preparing him for the day's battles. When he was young and hungry, he'd been a bull on Wall Street, charging through obstacles, unstoppable. Now? Now he ran because he couldn't sleep.

The city was dead at this hour. His breath fogged in the cold air as his feet hit the pavement rhythmically. Three miles in, his phone buzzed against his hip. A text from his broker: MARKET DOWn 400 POINTS. FED RATE HIKE COMING.

David stopped running and leaned against a brick building, suddenly unable to breathe. The bull inside him—the one that had survived crashes, recessions, his father's death—was finally, truly dead. He'd been running from the truth for months: he'd lost everything that mattered chasing things that didn't.

His phone buzzed again. Sarah.

Can we talk? The divorce papers are ready.

David stared at the message, his hand shaking. He looked up at the gray sky, noticed for the first time in years how the streetlights flickered off as dawn approached. He wasn't a zombie. He was just a man who'd forgotten how to live.

He started walking home, not running. For the first time in thirty years, David decided to let the bull market wait.