Personal Narrative: My Hero's Journey

I ran with a dead man. Well, I ran on the same team as him, and he wasn’t exactly dead while he was a runner. We were both on the Fort Mill track team, striving to better our bodies and our minds, by both going to sports and attending class. He was a senior, I was a sophomore . His name is Tee Muhammad. He drowned in the summer of 2015, while swimming in Lake Wylie. He was nineteen years old. I didn’t know him very well as a person, but I knew I respected him. Tee was an excellent runner, a few schools begging for him to run for them, yapping like hungry puppies at his feet. As far as I knew, he was a man of God, keeping close both his convictions and values. He seemed like the model citizen, making every right choice, getting rewarded at

The closest thing Tee and I had of a friendship was subtle eye contact on the track, an almost primal acknowledgement of a relationship. He was always boisterous with the other seniors, and I knew I melted into the background for him. However, from my perspective, I saw a successful senior who had a clear cut path ahead of him. This isn’t even what I thought on the surface; it was almost a subconscious thing. I’m stuck to the ground due to gravity, every snowflake is different, Tee Muhammad is successful. It was almost foolish of me to think this way, but that’s how I saw it. And then, one cool summer day, he drowned in Lake

No amount of cliches could really describe the mute pain I felt. That was the most curious thing about the issue was that I didn’t feel fully sad, and I certainly wasn’t happy. That guy that I ran with, that guy that I would occasionally see at FCA, was dead. He had no more miles to run, no more midnight studying sessions, no more FCA. I had a realization just like Gordie did in The Body. It was a numb feeling; a realization that a human life, so young and full of potential, could end so abruptly. If he had thought not to go swimming, he might still be here, and I wouldn’t be writing this