“Storm Run” was the first story I had published, in a now defunct literary magazine called The Bellowing Arc. I’ve known a lot of runners who managed to replaced addictions to cigarettes and other things with an addiction to running. I was no exception. Most of us do not openly discuss it, but we all have our struggles. We lose loved ones and are overcome with grief that can seem impossible to shake. Down deep, we may not even want to shake it because losing the pain feels like a betrayal of the love we lost.
Sometimes we hate ourselves for addictions or other destructive behaviors we cannot seem to shake along the way. In my own life, running brought me back from the brink. I had an impossible-to-quit addiction to cigarettes, and drinking was always there to take the pain away. At least it seemed that way. But there was always the nagging thought that I’d let myself fall away from who I was or wanted to be.
Running changed that. Running replaced nicotine and weakness. The anxieties that plagued me become manageable. I became a better person and a better father and husband. I was thinking about those things when I wrote “Storm Run.”