Runaway

Let me stumble upon a brand new life because the green beans are taking too long to cook, and I have to unload the dishwasher, and my house is a mess, and I’m on the cusp of losing my ever living shit

I think my life might be better if I lived in Colorado, mhm
Sit around and get high, sippin' some white wine out the bottle (bottle)
I’d throw my phone into a lake
And watch it sink to a better place, down at the bottom
I think my life might be better if I lived in Colorado

'Cause maybe there I'd like myself
Work on my mental health
Might even feel compelled
To sing karaoke
Down at the local dive
And meet some young ex-wife
We'd start a brand new life
And never be lonely

I’m a Native New Yorker, and I’m obsessed with my city. Growing up, I constantly joked that I’d never leave. I love my apartment. I live blocks away from some of my closest friends. I have a regular coffee shop with the best oat milk chai you could ask for. I live minutes away from two large parks. Life could be worse.

And even so, I still fantasize about moving whenever I travel. I love to get away - from my life and myself - even when things are going relatively well and there are only a few, minor, solvable problems. I’d rather abandon ship. I’m a good swimmer.

I sleep way better when I’m away from home, which surprises most people. And I love to run.

Metaphorically. Not literally. Unless you count rushing to the train when I’m late. In that case, I’m an avid runner and should have my own Nike campaign by now.

When I say I love to run, I mean it like this -

(Listen until about a minute in and you’ll get the gist.)

I can go from 0 to 100 alarmingly fast. One minute my mind is calm, and the next minute my heart and thoughts are racing (hello anxiety!) and I would like everyone to leave me alone until the end of time forever and please God do not ask me to do one more single thing. Do not expect anything from me. Let me cocoon on my couch and watch hallmark movies and Gilmore Girls all day and pretend I’m living in Stars Hollow. Let me move to a distant, quaint, nondescript small town and start working in an inn. Let me float away and disappear and start fresh. 

Let me stumble upon a brand new life because the green beans are taking too long to cook, and I have to unload the dishwasher, and my house is a mess, and I’m on the cusp of losing my ever living shit.

Anyone relate?

When I travel, I overpack clothes but leave all my worries and troubles behind. I become completely entrenched in the place I’m in. I get swept up in my new setting, examine all the details, and try on my friends’ lives for a few days like a comfy sweater that fits just right. Everything in my own life suddenly feels so physically and emotionally far away - whether I’m an hour away in the Hudson Valley or a plane ride away on another continent. I feel lighter and calmer. Engulfed in possibility. It’s one of my favorite feelings. 

I wrote part of this post from my friend’s parents’ backyard in Chicago. We met while studying classical theater for a semester in London. Would absolutely love to live there again. Excuse me while I go research flats in Notting Hill. I also wouldn’t mind living right here on this gorgeous block in Chicago. Excuse me while I visit an open house down the street.

I’ve loved the concept of escapism since high school. As I was pondering over the various angles I could approach this essay from, I was reminded of a paper that I wrote in my senior year of college in my Modern British Literature class. It remains one of my favorite classes I’ve ever taken.* I called the essay, “Letting Go of the Light”. 

*We’ll chat about my love of English classes in much more depth later, in a future essay. English class lovers unite! This excerpt below is for you.

Modernism was a very short lived moment (from roughly 1910-1930) and yet it’s all around us still, because the questions put forth were never answered or forgotten. We still have the modernists' tools, but they aren’t designed to help us find a way out, rather to cope and find acceptance. I believe that we’re meant to understand that we will never be given any specific tools for navigating the murky waters of our own lives, but instead must create them, and believe in them, for ourselves. We can’t understand the world, but we can become more comfortable with that fact. Maybe the point of Modernism is to realize we never had any power or greater wisdom in the first place. In recognizing our own limits, we gain the ability to truly appreciate the limitlessness of the world. And that begs the odd, yet necessary question: what if we’re the limit? What if we are what stand in our own way of finding peace, because we’re too stubborn to accept that we’ll never truly understand this vast world we were placed in? 

We can never become what we once were. We cannot unlearn all that we know. Our past, ignorant selves will only exist in memory. But we can remember and revisit them, and that’s what pre-modernist literature is for, in a sense: indulging in a time when we viewed the world a different way, more simply. We love those kinds of books, because it’s comforting to visit a world where things seem simpler than they are and always end in happy ever after, even if we now know that nothing is simple. 

Our world will never be simple again-- the realization that it was never simple is disorienting and unsettling beyond belief. But we can revisit those seemingly simpler times, and indulge in entertainment that doesn’t prompt us to contemplate the mysteries of the universe; that’s called escapism. Escapism has a huge purpose in a world like ours that is constantly unraveling.

But so does Modernism. Once we close the book, or turn off the movie, or leave the theater, we must find some way to reckon with the world that we live in. We need modernist literature because while it’s nice - and necessary- to be entertained, we must engage with the ever-changing world, and cozy up to the unfamiliar, to survive, because we don’t live in a fairy tale, we live here. 

That’s the most harrowing part of modernist literature. You look up from the page, but you can’t just leave the thoughts there. Those haunting, familiar truths will confront you at every turn. You can’t un-see them. Those who aren’t grappling with these truths are also in the darkness, whether they know it or not. They’re just pretending it’s light. I think we’re better off wandering around in the darkness, consciously lost, then sitting with our eyes shut, holding on to an illusion. 

In an early episode of We Can Do Hard Things, Glennon Doyle and her sister Amanda talk about creating a life that you don’t constantly want to take a vacation from. While I absolutely agree with the sentiment that we should strive to build lives that we enjoy the majority of the time - I do know deep down that even if I had my dream life, I would still want to run away quite a bit. I love trying on new lives. If I could escape into any book, it would be The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. One of my favorite musicals is If/Then by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, starring Idina Menzel. I am a huge, huge fan of exploring alternate realities.

Tami Carey

made me think about alternate realities in a brand new way in “The Unlikely Hope of Giving Up”.

You know, maybe alternate realities are not only these versions of our lives that we’ll never experience. Maybe they are also those not-yet-existent futures we hold within us. Those invisible worlds that we create with every intentional step toward them. If we can see it in our mind, it’s only a matter of time.

While making a big decision once, one of my best friends coined the phrase “a reality that doesn’t need to happen” to describe a situation that would be ideal and wonderful, but not necessarily essential in order to make their life complete. Only you can decide which realities need to happen, and which ones don’t, and it’s sometimes hard to know in the moment when you’re making those big choices. Ex: I would love to live by the beach one day, but I don’t know that it’s a reality that needs to happen. Alternatively, living a life centered around my writing is a reality that absolutely does need to happen, and I’m grateful that I can take intentional steps towards that life every single day. 

What kinds of alternate realities do you fantasize about? What are some realities that you need to happen, and some that don’t? Where do you want to escape to, literally and/or figuratively? Tell me all about it in the comments.

P.S. If any of my long lost relatives are reading this and considering leaving me an inn, say the word and I’ll drop everything to move to whatever remote location you need me to be in. And please let the charming local bookstore owner/baker/barista/school teacher know that I’m single.