Three Miles Out

My phone buzzed for the third time. Group chat blowing up about the baseball team's tryouts tomorrow. Everyone expected me to be there—my dad, my friends, even Mrs. Henderson who'd been telling me since seventh grade that I had "natural talent." But honestly? I couldn't stand it. The standing around, the waiting, the performative masculinity of it all. I'd rather be moving.

So I went running instead.

Three miles into the trail, my lungs burning in that good way, I finally felt like myself. No expectations. No performing. Just my feet hitting dirt, breath syncing with the rhythm of the trees around me. This was real. This was mine.

Then I heard it. A twig snap, heavy and deliberate.

I froze. Fifty feet ahead, a black bear materialized from the brush, massive and terrifying and somehow majestic. My brain immediately went to all the wrong places—what was I supposed to do? Play dead? Make myself big? Back away slowly?

The bear looked at me, and I looked back, and in that weirdly endless moment, I realized something: I wasn't scared. I was present. Completely, terrifyingly present. Not worried about baseball tryouts or my dad's disappointed texts or my friends calling me a flake. Just here, now, alive.

The bear huffed, turned, and ambled away like I wasn't even worth its time.

I stood there for like five minutes, my heart doing something weird in my chest. Then I turned around and ran back, faster than I'd ever run in my life, but not away from anything. Towards something.

Towards honesty.

When I got home, I ignored the fifteen missed messages and instead texted my mom: "I'm not doing baseball. I'm joining cross country."

Her response came immediately: "About time."

Sometimes you need to almost get eaten by a bear to figure out who you actually are.