what i chase won't set me free.

Travelling has always done weird things to me. While I've always loved being abroad and out of my usual habitat, only in the last few years have I noticed that I actually started to dread coming home.

Home is a strange, unwelcome concept to me that actually makes me feel guilty a lot more than it makes me feel comforted. My family is a tight knit one, we all get along great and we're really supportive of each other. I just have such a need for my own independence and march to my own drum that I often end up feeling smothered by constantly having them around.

That sounds pretty terrible, right? It makes me feel pretty terrible, but I can't help it. I am so much happier when the people I love are a phone call away instead of being right upstairs--it allows me the freedom I need to function, but I also have their support when I need it.

I don't like "home". I don't nest. I don't create emotional ties that everyone always talks about--ties to people, places, triggers. The longer I stay in a place, the more uncomfortable I become and I'm driven by the insatiable need to leave. Go some place new. Discover something all over again.

My dad has always been a bit of a wanderer. I suspect that before he married my mom and had us, he was in the exact same place that I am now. Anybody that spends a large part of their life as a travelling musician is nomadic at heart.

Driving the 14 hours to Nova Scotia by myself was one of the best things I could have ever done to get away from the feeling of restlessness that I struggled with before I left. But now that I'm back, the feeling has intensified. Intensified to the point where I tore down more than half of the things in my room, with plans to reconstruct the entire thing.

I need change. Some things need to change.

It feels like everything in my life kind of bushwacked me all at the same time, really. I just realized that I am going to be graduating in December, and while I do have a plan, I do not have a Plan B. My plan is to nail my dream job in the NHL right out of school.

That is not a good plan.

My running has taken a hit lately. It has taken me weeks to admit that. Running is--or it used to be--my one sanctuary, my one time and place where it didn't matter what the hell else was going on in my life, I didn't care. I was running.

But now it's all pain and sweat and fatigue. Running has become the few hours in my day that I dread, and I hate that it has come down to this. The problem began when I asked myself the dreaded question that signifies the beginning of a runner's demise: Why?

As soon as a runner asks themselves why they do this, it's over. It's over because there is no logical, rational explanation as to why you are out there every gruelling day, sweating, aching, missing family dinners, TV shows, coffee with friends. It is not sane. It is not desirable. And a runner realizes that when they ask themselves why.

I am tired of being in pain. It's not even just my knees anymore, although they're the worst. I'm worried that I am doing damage to my body that I (or my orthopedic surgeon)won't be able to repair. You can mould muscles, stretch ligaments, lubricate joints. But pound around asphalted Canada long enough and you're going to wear out something real. Something that surgery can't make better. It's connective tissue, in the end, that gets us all. No runner ever retires because they want to. They retire because one final piece of gristle went pop and presto, they're a pedestrian. The Achilles sheath. Fascias.

I'm tired of everything hurting. My back aches. My lungs feel like they're going to explode. My legs are tired, my hip hurts on impact and my feet are a complete mess of calluses and broken toenails. I'm tired of being in a constant state of pain brought on by this idiotic sport that I do. And before, the pain was tolerable because I loved running so much. Now, I don't even have that.

Maybe I'll take a break from it, breathe for a little while. It seems easy to say that, and yet after I locked my shoes in the trunk of my car today, I trudged out a half hour later, laced them up, and still went for a run.

Running and I might need to break up for a little while.