Knowing and Still Choosing to Keep Going

I keep outrunning a certain quiet from by filling the days so completely that the silence never gets close enough to show me what is living inside it waiting to be looked at honestly,
I keep outrunning a certain quiet because the last time I stopped long enough to really listen to it, what it showed me was not the person I had been presenting to the world all this time,
I keep outrunning a certain quiet from that I have dressed in the language forward motion, when the truth is I have been using this movement to avoid the confrontation the stillness keeps trying to arrange,
If I sat down with myself tonight without a task or a reason to look away what is the first thing I would see before I had the chance to redirect my attention somewhere much more comfortable,
I keep outrunning a certain quiet that doesn’t punish me with its content but rather by the things it keeps offering me that I’m not yet ready to accept without flinching and peacefully looking away…

I have been reluctant to sit with myself not because the alone is empty but because it is full of things I have been quietly refusing to face while other people were there to focus on something,
I have been reluctant to sit with myself because when the company leaves and the noise settles what remains is the full version of me that I have not been fully honest with in a very long time,
I’ve been hesitant to confront myself because I’ve realized that beneath all my avoidance, there’s something I’ve been avoiding because facing it demanded change,
What am I protecting by never remaining fully present with myself for long, that is what I have been refusing to see, and it is now ready to come forward and be named clearly,
I’ve been hesitant to sit with myself for so long that the fear has begun to feel like a permanent part of my personality, rather than the result of a daily decision I make…

What meets me in the quiet is not an enemy but neither is it the flattering image I keep on display, it is something more honest, and much more harder to ignore,
What meets me in the quiet is not an enemy, I wish she possessed certain qualities in places I have pretended she does, not because claiming her capability would eliminate all my excuses,
What meets me in the quiet is not an enemy, who has been waiting there patiently while I outran her with her own plans and she has not moved or changed her expression because she is not in a hurry the way I am in the real world,
Can I stay with what I find in the silence for long enough to let it become information rather than running from it the moment it starts to feel like something I do not want to know about myself,
What meets me in the quiet is not an enemy, but she is asking me to stop choosing the comfortable lie of staying too busy to look for just one more day...

Trying to outrun it is not protecting me from what I fear finding, it is only giving it more space to grow each time I circle it without stopping,
Trying to outrun it is not protecting me from what I fear finding, if I slow down, I’ll realize that the fear is already there, pressing against every wall I build to keep it quiet,
Trying to outrun it doesn’t protect me from emptiness, ugliness, or guilt; instead, it intensifies each of those feelings by refusing to let them be clearly seen in the light without the distance I maintain between us,
If I redirect the energy I currently spend on running toward the honest look I’ve been postponing for years, what would become available to me in my actual life,
Trying to outrun it is not protecting me from what I fear finding, and I have known this longer than I care to admit, which makes the running feel like a quiet punishment, a way of exhausting myself instead of stopping long enough to see…

Watchwords:
The quiet was full not empty and I ran,
Alone long enough for the unseen thing to name itself,
She waited while I outran her with noise,
The running manufactured what it was supposed to prevent,
Knowing and still choosing is its own punishment...