Escape

Oh, how I’ve missed this sensation. The waking up in the morning before the dew has set knowing I’d never be up this early without an alarm on any other day, sometimes it’s even a strife with the alarm. My dreams could feel my excitement as I jam what I expect the day to go like into them at every opportunity. By the time I get out of bed, I’ve done this day a thousand times this week. I know exactly how I want it to play out.

I throw on my gear with no care in the world about the noise I’m making and fill my bag. I’m still a bit early so I switch on the tv and put on the songs that take me back to this same day weeks or months back. Songs that give me that sense of invincibility and that extra zeal this early in the morning.

It’s about time to scram and I haven’t eaten. I stare down at my quibbling stomach but food is not part of this ritual anymore. Ever since that pint of watered-down milk, food has never made a comeback here. I fling on my bag and gambol down the stairs, four at a time, counting my steps as I go. The door opens and the cold air hits me, I feel it in my toes even though I carefully wrapped them in plastic. On my second skip out of the heavy magnetic door, I hear a call come from above “good luck today”. It’s old man Carl, he’s the most bounteous old man I know even though we don’t talk much but he understands my excitement and that means a lot. Just how much I wouldn’t find out until later on when he passes and I yearn for someone there to wish me good luck on days like this.

I’ve arrived but I’m still in my zone. I’m still receiving incitement from the sounds coming out of my headphones as I try to blank out the world. Others are chattering but I prefer it this way, maybe that’s why I’ve always been an outsider here as well as the last place I was at up the road.

You see this was my moment of escapism until I was done here nothing else mattered but what I was about to do. I’m not as mentally unshakeable as I may come across but this is my clutch that’s why I vowed to never stop. When I’ve lost people or lost myself this is what I’ve clung to to get out of my head. When you fail to comprehend this you make an enemy out of me but champion me in this and you have my undivided admiration. I think back to two times, when you came to see me in the final and when you called it just a game then failed to come at all.

It’s time to head out there, this is what I’ve been looking forward to all week. I stride out of the claustrophobic port-a cabin and as my feet touch the turf I can here the studs piercing through the sludge repeatedly as my teammates follow suit. “Come on boys, let’s make sure we take the points today.”