Thoughts From 16 Days and 2049 Miles
I ran away from home.
It’s not the first time I’ve done it. The summer before I turned nine, my older brother injured his knee playing pop warner football. My parents were wrapped up in that drama, and I ended up taking care of my younger brother (three at the time) most of the time. So I convinced my friend Ruthann to empty her piggy bank and I packed my white hard-shell suitcase covered in gold disco dancers that had been a Christmas gift from my aunt, and we headed into downtown Glen Ellyn to do…something? I think there was candy. The whole adventure lasted about four hours, at which point Ruthann’s mom found us and took us home. (My parents hadn’t realized I was gone.) I got grounded, not for running away but for convincing Ruthann to fund the entire thing.
Even as a kid, I was an criminal mastermind.
But 16 days ago, I got in my pink mini cooper and pointed it east. There was a stop in Vegas, then Denver, then Glen Ellyn. There was a near-miss where I almost ran out of gas and was convinced I would end up human jerky at a tiny gas station at the end of Colorado, and a monsoon in Iowa that threatened to wash my tiny car off of the road. I had considered pulling over, but I decided against it. There was only one way to go, and that was forward. Maybe more slowly, more carefully, but still pushing ahead through the sheets of rain and the fear and the darkness punctuated by streaks of lightning across the sky.
I crossed into Illinois and the clouds cleared until it was just me and the lights on my dashboard and voice as I sung along to my playlist at the top of my lungs. I pulled into the drive in the humid midwestern night, pulled my suitcase (turquoise, sadly not covered in gold disco dancers) out of the hatchback. There was broccoli casserole and I managed to scare up the saddest bottle of wine (mixed with sparkling water, I was desperate) and then I climbed the narrow stairs to my bedroom. When I woke up the next day, I realized that just like when I was eight, I didn’t really think past the escape.
But I was here. So what now?
I went through the motions of being human: I woke up, I crawled out of bed and walked downtown. I sprinted up the stairs at my high school over and over and over and over hoping that returning to the scene of the crime (what crime? I’m not sure) would spark something in me, knock a piece lose that would finally be the one to complete the puzzle.
It was the second or third day, with my thighs on fire and gasping for breath that I wondered if I would never find the missing piece. Maybe I’m not supposed to.
There are all sorts of milestones that we’re told we need to achieve, boxes we need to tick off to have a happy or successful life once we leave high school: college, career, marriage, kids, house, vacations, retirement. It’s the game of LIFE where the more checkmarks you get, the better you’ve done.
But I’ve never been one to tick off boxes. Or so I thought.
It’s not a secret that I started therapy back in October of 2018. I didn’t want to go for the longest time. I didn’t need it. I was fine. Things were fine.
Things were not fine.
I ran away as a kid and never really came back. I stuffed my not-fineness down further and further, thinking that it would disappear. But nothing ever really does. Feelings are like plastic: You think you’re recycling that shit when you’re really you're just killing ocean mammals.
I was a fucked up velveteen rabbit, except I didn’t want someone’s love to make me real. I didn’t want to be real. Real is ugly and gritty and confusing. Real is terrifying. Real is vulnerable. Real means cracking through the hard candy shell and yeah, you think that soft candy center is gonna be delicious but surprise it begins with completely gumming up the works.
Someone asked if I was on an “Eat Pray Love” but I responded it was more like “Fuck Marry Kill” (note: I have not any of those on this trip.) Being vulnerable with yourself is a lot, but being vulnerable with other people is difficult and scary and embarrassing. Holy mother of god, it is embarrassing. In terms of utter awkwardness, it’s like a second adolescence except at least now I have a bra that fits.
However, I am putting myself out there in ways that I did not think I was capable of. Terror is my constant companion, but fear, oddly enough, is something I am not afraid of. I’ve always taken risks to craft the life that I want.
I understand that there will not be people who make it with me to the other side of this. That think I am fucking things up. That I’m making decisions that are confusing and rash. But it’s weird: in the eye of my own personal hurricane, I am eerily calm. I am the most fine in my not-fineness.
At some point, I’ll point my car west and head back to LA. But I’ll be back.
For now, that’s enough.