Presence

The pain is everywhere.

My arms, legs, neck, back and stomach.

I wince at the slightest movement.

My arms hang limp at my sides; if I try and lift them anymore than a few inches, they scream in protest. Standing up after sitting at my desk for a few hours is practically impossible; muscles that yesterday I didn't know existed refuse to respond to my commands.

I walk like Frankenstein, lumbering down the hallway with a look of pain plastered across my face. Every laugh is filled with pain; coughing and sneezeing feels as if a bomb has gone off in my insides, the thunderous echoes of the blast rolling over my rib cage. I lie, practically motionless, waiting for my body to regain its composure.

All this from a little game of football. They call it the Turkey Bowl.

It's not the pain that bothers me, so much as the fact that, in my mind, I'm still the 11 year old who stole 55 bases in little league, the 13 year old who ran a six-minute mile, or the 14 year old who rode his bike for miles through the woods, crossing streams without stopping to catch a breath. Instead, the pain reminds me that I'm the 26 year old who spends most of his life working in front of a computer, can barely make it up a flight of steps without stopping to rest, whose childhood lies forever and far behind him, unreachable except through the memory of what once was.