From a writer’s perspective:
Handle with care, for this is a fragile affair—do not touch the glass, lest the walls collapse into ruins.
I have ever so often obsessively thought about running away. The notion, perhaps, fragile in my own hands as it appears that I too have been down this road. The mystery of why people pack their bags and leave is profound. Sensibly, we escape. But escaping is a land so broad to fathom. Many run to escape a life so difficult. Some are pursued by their own fear.
To run to find something new, to explore, to restart the fire long doused inside. I believe we elegiacally run, with a poignant grace, to survive.
Our veins, like wires connected, compelled to only ever choose one out of two things, if by chance imperiled. Fight of flee. But we must agree that it is so little of us with the courage to fight. We do what we know best…we run.
The writer only ever pauses at a chapter so exacting, while the reader sets down the book at a detail that touches their soul—be it the words “The End” or a line like “I carry your heart with me. -E.E. Cumming”.
Things that break us force us to stop, turn the way back, forge a new path. Forget…forget…out of sight, out of mind. They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but distance bridges the gap for understanding. Distance in miles, distance like souls apart, distance like you are here but my hands are too cold to touch, distance like forgetting your favorite song, distance like moving, like leaving, like a glass teetering on the edge, destined to shatter. Distance opens your eyes, distance forces you to see, reflect, introspect, ponder and it bills you the truth.
So, I beg you to run if you must. The train never stops, but one day, your timer will.
Running, barefoot against the ground. To run without looking back, feeling the pulse of the earth beneath your feet. I have wandered this path alone, lost in my dreams. These thoughts have eaten the flesh in my mind for ages, too tentative to voice lest I muddle my words. Fearful to speak to unearth an egregiously disturbing past where everything was buried, to be forgotten -the fate unforgiven, the story of a lone child.
I walk back into my hometown and everything feels the same yet so much has changed. The nostalgia is depressing, bittersweet, and persistent. The roads are now tarmacked, yet when it rains the river bursts its banks and splits the town in two.
Behind the tinted windows, my neighbors hide watching as I carry on, as I twist this burden of life in my hands. I can see them like ghosts looking in as they mumble to themselves, “We know this script, she will…never make it.” Their whispers sag my shoulders. This road bears no mud, only the dust of years past, yet my feet feel encumbered. The ground is sticky, it slows me down. I used to never know anything outside of this town, but now I know of the world, and the universe expanding with each passing moment. I used to think I would never make it out, that like them, I would settle in a house by the side of the road and watch the little children play.
Mother thinks this town will be the end of her. She loves this place, even though she once had a dream of settling elsewhere, far away from here. The gossip passes by and knocks on our door each morning, the scorns and smiles spread the wrinkles on her face. She wonders if I will ever return to stay, though she knows deep down that such a return is but a distant dream. She thinks it’s ludicrous to run away from the familiar walls of home but I know that she was my home -if I ever had to define it. She birthed a warmth in this house for a home, without her it would be terrifying to stay in this alien place where our neighbors have painted their walls with shadows that look at us as we pass.
The kids I grew up with have become strangers, one by one. Occasionally, I check my mail for the wedding invitations they once promised. A few call and leave a voicemail as they wonder what became of me. “You forgot about this place, your home,” one might say, casting a guilt I struggle to shrug off. Am I to blame for leaving, or are they tormented for not leaving? I may never know. Now, when I return, they regard me as a stranger.
There were dreams built in this place, seeds we left as we plowed the land. My parents would yell and I would look up at the sky and wish to get away. I wished my bed wouldn’t get cold, and that someday the tea wouldn’t lose flavor. I hoped a day would come when I would wish to stay but nothing ever changed with the seasons. Until the day came to get away…and I ran.
Arguably, the pain came from staying, standing in the same place for too long. Yet, there was a fear that by staying they would be right, that I would become nothing. The picture frames on the wall multiplied, and with each new addition, my smile grew fainter, more shallow—nearly hollow.
In truth, it wasn’t sadness, or that I felt alone. I felt something, and it came to me so suddenly to leave. And when I left I didn’t know I was running away, but I moved two cities in a month and my best friend’s calls went to voicemail. I built a home for myself where I would sit by the walls and remember. And I couldn’t forget the depth of how broken one could get. I didn’t think that I would have the courage to go back.
I called my mother every day, and my father would only check in that I was alive. And I was right about that place -no one understood. Peddling lies that I had run away with a man, and I would not return for I was lost in the city. But how wrong they were. The only time I had ever felt lost was in that small hometown, where all roads lead to the same old store, and everyone knew each other by name.
It wasn’t until later that I realized I was no different from the rest, those who fantasized about leaving. Perhaps they were right. Maybe I had run towards nothing, perhaps I had left to become nothing. Their voices dragged me to the ground, bone by bone, branding me as an impostor, a fraud. Each morning, fear clung to my windows like a persistent shadow.
But there’s only so far you can run. After months, then years of fleeing, the voices grew faint. Like tending to an old tree, watering it, and weeding its roots, I finally mustered the courage to go back. I returned home to confront the ghosts of my past. “You’ve changed,” they said, while I observed that they had not. “You’re a different person,” well, it was necessary, having now understood why people run away from home, to keep themselves sane.
I hope when I die, my ashes are scattered by the roadside, outside of this town.
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