I feel the need to rove. To travel. To roam the planet. I’ve had these feelings before and I’m sure I’ll get them again. Over and over again. It’s an itch under my skin that I just can’t get to because my fingernails are too short or my arms aren’t long enough to reach.
I want to go to Paris. Or down the street. Back to see my parents or my sister. I want to go to the beach and the movies and walk the rows at Target.
Remember when you used to drive down the freeway with the radio turned up and your favorite song playing and you’d look out the window and see miles of glittery dark and twisted tape? Someone had thrown it out the window – what was maybe their favorite tape or maybe their most unfavorite – and the wind had blown it into one very long glittery streamer. And you saw it out of the corner of your eye and wondered for a fleeting moment what tape it was. Country? Pop? Chicago 17? But the Patsy Cline playing in your car was so much better than anything out there on the ground that you let it go and went back to munching on sunflower seeds and drinking Dr. Pepper and singing along at the top of your lungs even though you aren’t that great of a singer.
If I go to Target and wander the rows I’ll end up spending money. I don’t want to do that. If I get a plane ticket I’ll spend money and I don’t want to do that. If I drive up the coast I’ll need gas and a place to stay and that costs money and I don’t want to do that.
The video interviews had much more to do with this than anything else I think. Now, after realizing I won’t be doing them, I can see that. Yes, I sincerely wanted to document a part of history and maybe I still will, but, the getting out and away and going somewhere and doing something…..that isn’t here where I am…..that is the thing that I crave.
I take myself everywhere with me, wherever I go. It doesn’t matter how far I ‘get away.’ And I do know that. But I also know that it takes a few days for me to catch up with me and in the meantime? I feel productive and worthwhile. I feel like a real person, whatever that is. And I’m happy.
When I come home, it’s all hot chocolate or a glass of wine on the front stoop and a happy hug to see me. It’s catching up on the news and sifting through the mail and feeling comfortable in my own skin wearing my comfy jeans and a sweatshirt with paint on it. And it all feels so great. The promise of what new projects might happen, as they loom on the horizon.
A few days later it hits me – I’m just me. And I’m home. And I’m always going to be me and things are never going to change. And living in that world of absolutes is what home turns into and I fight it and try not to obsess about it until it becomes so tight, this second skin, so tight. And I just want out. Someplace to go. Some people to see and talk to. Away from me. Before the darkness swallows me up again.
I understand wanting to get away from yourself. Out.
You are always welcome to head South. And bring your-whole-self with you. I’m kinda partial to her.
this i understand too well, the struggle of having your brain think all these great escape ideas through, and why they aren’t “practical”. stupid shitty brain of mine, not ever letting me have any fun. sometimes the small escapes like the back yard, or a library or a park help curb the urge until that other part of my brain realizes what is happening and begins to fantasize again…
ditto the last caller, you are welcome in my southern home too.
I’ve had to decide to be okay with being me. It is hard. It has always been hard. I like “me” on some levels and despise “me” on others.
I know one thing – I wouldn’t put up with me.
I’m the opposite though – I LOVE being home. I WANT to be home. I’m a hermit. Going out means finding something to wear and being the “me” that takes energy.
This is interesting because getting away makes me wonder whether there is a me. It’s a quite different me who arrives whenever I go away. There’s the me here and the me elsewhere and I prefer the me elsewhere but it would require constantly moving and never stopping to dodge the me here on a permanent basis.
Wow. I know that feeling. That imagining that if I just go somewhere I will be a different me. I can leave parts of me behind and discover new parts of me.
Sometimes it happens.
Then I have to come home where it’s empty and lonely and I only have myself. Guess I really do need to get out of this marriage and build a place where being me alone is good enough. It won’t happen where I’m at at the moment, and running away won’t help it either.
i have this wanderlust. in both a physical and psychological sense. i took it so far this year as to do very destructive things to get away, only to realize at the end of it all, that these things were only a temporary salve to the inner turmoil i was experiencing. in the end, i was still stuck with me. and it’s with me that i have to get comfy and make my peace. love you, madly.
why not doing the video interviews!? is there a petition i can sign?
Leah,
Your wrong, things never stay the same, they always change. Try keeping that in mind instead. Good luck.