Hector M. Gomez

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In the pursuit of something just out of reach.

  • “One Bar Left”

    The connection is fading, and it’s getting harder to find that perfect signal again. You are lost. You are broken. You are so close to giving up. You have never felt so close yet so far away. You’re trying to fix this, but you’re terrified you’ll never have that perfect connection again.

    You keep searching, staring at the bars, hoping they’ll fill back up. And maybe the real danger isn’t that the connection isn’t perfect, it’s that you’re so focused on perfection that you miss what’s still there. The signal is slowly fading. What are you going to do?

    Every step feels uncertain. You’re still here, still holding on, but with each step you risk losing the signal completely. You’re afraid to move too quickly, afraid to lean too far, afraid that one wrong choice could end it all.

    It’s dark. It’s cold. Your phone is about to die. You yell, but no one hears you. If it dies, you’ll be alone, and who knows what happens then. The other person is still there, but you know you won’t be able to call again if you lose the connection. You’re scared.

    Is this how it ends? You were fine, but suddenly you took the wrong turn. You were so focused on having a perfect connection that you lost track of where you were going.

    So you stop. You stop running. You stop searching. Your hands are shaking and your heart is breaking, and you realize, you’ve been so terrified of losing the connection that you forgot to actually use it.

    The signal is still there. Faint. Fragile. But there.

    And maybe that has to be enough right now. Maybe you don’t get to have perfect. Maybe you just get this, one more chance to try, to really try. Not the way you thought was enough, but the way that actually matters.

    You already know. Even through the static. Even through the silence. You will find your way back. You have to. Because the only thing worse than losing the connection is not trying hard enough to save it.

  • “What are you looking for?”

    What are you looking for? What is it that drives you? For some, it’s love. For others, it’s success or recognition. But for me, it’s pain. Agony. Fire. That slow relentless burn that crawls beneath the skin, it reminds me I’m still alive. I don’t run from it; I chase it. Because in that fire, there’s truth. There’s motion. There’s something real. The more it burns, the more awake I become. I don’t long for comfort, I long for the spark that ignites transformation. That’s what I’m really searching for: not healing, not escape, but the kind of pain that strips away the surface and burns off all those fragile layers to show me who I really am.

    I didn’t know I was searching for this until I had my first cross-country race that fall. New to the sport, I didn’t know what to expect. Running? What else could it be? That race changed my entire existence. I thought I could win and went straight to the front, with no prior racing experience; it was a ticking time bomb. A 5k is 3.1 miles, and by mile two, that bomb went off. Pain, pain, and more pain, I had never experienced anything like this before. Like seeing stars after hurting yourself, that’s what it felt like for the next mile. For the next eight minutes, I went somewhere deep within me I had never discovered.

    “What are you doing here?” my consciousness asked. Dark. Red. Flames inside my body, that’s all I saw. Am I in hell? Unable to breathe, grasping for air. With every step I took, the more it burned, the closer I felt to literal death. Is this what I was looking for?

    It’s at that very moment, when you’re closest to death, that nothing else matters. This pain breaks through your focus, demanding attention, making the world narrow and raw. You. That’s it. Your mind tells you to stop, your muscles ache, but your heart and soul want more. I knew I couldn’t stop, I had to finish no matter what. Those eight minutes felt like an hour; with every minute, a layer of my weakness burning off. Step by step, my eyes on fire, I would soon learn to control this newly discovered power.

    I crossed the finish line and everything went dark. I opened my eyes, and everyone I cared for was around me. Like waking up from a hospital bed, I felt like I had just survived something no one survives. “Is this what you like doing? YOU ARE CRAZY! I CAN’T WATCH YOU LIKE THIS.” That was the first and last time my mother saw me race. But for me, it was just the beginning.

    What was that? What had I just experienced? Like a drug addict, I needed more. I needed to go back.

    Fast forward to now, I have learned to control this feeling. My body has increased its tolerance, and I need bigger doses to feel that way. Minutes have turned into seconds, as it’s not until the last 400 or 200 meters of a race that I enter the deepest part of myself. My soul turns into fire, and where once I didn’t know what was happening, now I know exactly where I’m at. The faster I go, the hotter it gets. “This is what I am looking for,” I tell myself. Can you handle it? I’m about to find out.

  • “Forever Haunted”

    For every end, there is a beginning. But for every end, there’s also a middle. That’s where I find myself right now, not at the start, and not at the finish, but somewhere in between. I’ve begun. Now, I just need to see it end.

    I started running during my senior year of high school. I gained fitness quickly and kicked off my final cross country season with the kind of surprise any high school coach would dream of.

    Before running, I was a soccer player. I played from the age of six until I was sixteen, an entire decade. When I decided I wanted to be the best soccer player I could be, I started running. A lot. Every day. I didn’t realize it then, but I was training like a cross-country athlete preparing for his season.

    That summer, something nudged me to join the cross-country team. So I did. No pressure, no commitment, just me trying to get in shape for the upcoming soccer season. But it became something more. Something bigger. It’s the reason I’m writing this today.

    “The best ones are always running from ghosts.”
    I heard that quote recently, and it struck a chord deep within me. That season, I went from running an 18:38 5K to a 17:06 in just five races. No prior experience, just something I was running from. Ghosts.

    After cross country, my coach wanted me back, running, or return to the sport I had originally been running for.

    I chose to run. It was new. It was exciting. And deep down, I knew it was the path I needed to follow if I ever wanted to outrun those ghosts.

    That track season, I dropped my mile time from 4:58 to 4:36. My 800 from 2:14 to 2:03. I only tried the 3200 once, but I knew: middle distance was where my fire burned brightest.

    With those times, I earned a scholarship to a small community college 4 hours away from my hometown. It felt like the start of the end, or at least the beginning of something real.

    By then, I didn’t just love running as a sport, I needed it. It was more than a way to stay fit. It was how I escaped reality, how I kept my mind in sync with my soul.

    But life had different plans. And eventually, the ghosts I had been running from caught up with me, and didn’t just catch me; they ran me over. I became haunted, both in life and in running.

    I’m 24 now. I was 17 when I moved away. After all these years, I’ve finally gained enough distance to see where those ghosts were going. And this time, nothing is going to stop me.

    This year, I ran my first 3K steeplechase. I clocked a 9:39, without having any idea what I was doing. My mile PR now stands at 4:10, and that’s with low mileage. I can say, without hesitation, that one day, I will beat those ghosts. I will become the best steeplechaser in the world.

    Call me crazy, I’ve heard that before.

    I may have just started in this sport. But in many ways, I’ve been running my entire life. Running not just with my legs, but with my heart and my mind. Running away, yes, but also running toward something. Toward the lead I lost somewhere along the way.

    Because one day, it will all end. And when it does, I want to know I didn’t stop chasing.