Running in Non-Concentric Circles of Life

The Lion King was my favorite movie when I was younger. I would sit there, crying shamelessly as I watched it; I still do, sometimes. The opening scene was always magical for me, as the sun rose over the horizon and a jumbled babble streamed out of the speakers. I would sing along to Circle of Life, enthralled by the thousands of animals on scene dancing and running and (as it seemed to me) celebrating. As I got older I began to actually wonder what they meant by “circle of life”. What, like reincarnation or something? The never ending continuum of existence? What the hell was that even? I gave up after a while. It’s just a movie, filled with some appropriate-sounding mumbo jumbo. Who gives a f**k?

A circle has an infinite amount of points. An infinite amount of corners, an infinite amount of ledges, an infinite amount of ways to fall into or out of. I think of circles, I think of infinite. I think of circles, i also think of friends. Surprisingly, these two have never been linked. Infinite friends? Ha. As if. 

Some say life comes full circle. You’re born dependent, and more often than not, you die dependent. Bam. There’s your circle. I see my life more like a circle made of  scribbles. A circle made out of other circles. I’m not sure what that means, but that’s what my life seems like. 

Four years ago, around spring time, I read Catcher in the Rye as a freshman. People hated Holden Caulfield. I loved him. He was the inner workings of my brain laid out on paper, given a dick, and made extremely bold and upfront. I think I hide it better. I look at people and I hate them for their phoniness. Selfless? My a*s. She’s not selfless. Anyways, besides the point. Back then, in my immature, 14-year-old stupor, I added the last two lines of Catcher in the Rye to my “Favorite Quotes” on Facebook. “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” What I was thinking at the time, and how I related that quote to my life at that time eludes me. But here I sit, nearly four full years later, staring at the last week of my last first semester in high school, and I’m missing everybody. Every single person I have met, and every memory I have had, and every feeling, good or bad, I have had is coming at me head on, and it hurts so much. It’s like running with a group in a circle, except you’re much faster than the rest of the group, and you run the entire circle and catch up with the end of the group, but instead of running around them, you collide with all of them, head on. That’s what I feel like. A runner that’s running too fast. 

I loathe running.