Driving thought tangents

While in my driving daze (Mike left the whole chicken in his car overnight and all day until I discovered that we had no chicken in our refrigerator) I was thinking about this new health care bill and what it says to women about women, which of course went off into another thought tangent as soon as I drove by the Saint Francis Xavier Church.

Last summer I would occasionally go for a run outside and would pass by this church. Whenever I would run by the church I would take those seconds and dedicate them to my spiritual growth. I am more of a spiritual person than a religious person thus running by the church was my church. Of course thinking about running brought me to another thought tangent.

I miss being able to run outside more frequently. When I first started running in middle school I lived on a dirt road. I loved the sound of my shoes hitting the rocky dirt and the way the trees would line the road. It made my own little private world. Now that I am in a city I do not like to run outside as much. I hate the traffic and the smell of exhaust. I hate waiting to cross the road and I hate that instead of my being able to go into a magical world of nature I am forced to take note of who is around me. Am I safe?

There have been enough tragedies that have happened to women in my life to make me weary. It does not help that a simple run just for me can easily turn into the unwanted objectification of my body as some idiot men yell at me from their car windows. It feels as if I cannot have even a little space in the world, which brings me back to my original thought.

The health care bill reinforces the idea that I as a woman cannot have a full right to my body. As a young woman in this current culture it is easy for me to sometimes feel like I cannot own my body and I cannot have space without it being infringed upon. Even so, I keep journeying along because I know I really do own my body and that I will be able to be present in space.