Running with the Foxes

I'd been running for three years straight—literally. Cross country, track, winter training when nobody else was dumb enough to be outside. My parents had this whole narrative about how running would 'build character' and 'look great on college apps.' Mostly it just built blisters and sucked.

The day I stopped was a Tuesday. I'd laced up my usual Nikes, grabbed my lucky running hat—a faded blue dad cap I'd found at Goodwill—and headed to the trail behind the school like always. But instead of turning left toward the regular route, I turned right into the woods.

I wasn't running anymore. I was just walking.

That's when I saw it—a fox, orange-red against all the brown and gray dead leaves of March. It wasn't doing anything majestic or symbolic. It was rooting through someone's discarded Taco Bell wrapper, ears twitching, completely unbothered by my existence.

We stared at each other for like ten seconds. The fox didn't perform. It didn't try to be what foxes are 'supposed' to be in nature documentaries. It was just there, being a fox, eating garbage, living its best life.

Something in my chest unlocked. I'd spent so long running toward things my parents wanted for me that I'd forgotten how to just exist.

I sat down on a fallen tree trunk and pulled off my running hat. My hair was plastered to my forehead with sweat. I put the hat on backward—something I'd never done because it looked 'unknowledgeable.' Whatever that meant.

The fox finished its taco treasure and trotted off, tail stuck straight up like a middle finger to respectability.

I sat there for twenty minutes until my phone buzzed with a text from my coach: 'Practice started 10 min ago, everything good?'

I stared at it, then typed back: 'Actually, no. I'm done.'

My hands shook. I'd never quit anything in my life.

Then I added: 'But I'll be at practice tomorrow. To help with equipment. I don't want to run anymore.'

I started walking back, wearing my hat backward, feeling weirdly light. Like I'd been carrying something I didn't even know was there.

That night, I told my parents. They were confused at first, then kinda upset, then—surprisingly—okay. My mom was like, 'We just wanted you to be happy. We thought running made you happy.'

'I thought so too,' I said. 'I was wrong.'

Now I work at the animal shelter instead. Wednesday evenings, cleaning cages and feeding animals that don't care about college apps or character-building. Sometimes there's even a fox in the wildlife rehab enclosure, and I swear it winks at me like we share a secret.

I'm still running. Just not away from myself anymore.