Running Away and Other Things I'm Avoiding

You'd be surprised how tempting it is to run away from all your problems. To just pick all your things up and tumble out into the world because surely anything must be better than where you are now.

Over the course of these last two months, I think I've been told about three times that "you're the last person I expected to be in this position."

And I was the last person I expected to be in this position as well.

But as I've continued through 2021, I've become more and more aware of how toxic my parents are. How toxic their ideas have become. Last year I remember joking to my friend that I would never consider moving somewhere without extensive research, like other foolish people.

Now I get it.

When you're in a bad situation, anywhere else starts to look better than where you are.

So today I want to talk to you about why I'm not running away. Someone probably thinks it has something to do with 'facing up to my bad situation' - which I'd usually be doing exactly that.

But there’s a bigger thing to running away than that. I don’t think facing up to your situation should always be the good option. There are sometimes points in your life where you can’t face the bad situation, no matter how much you might want to, because you will risk a piece of yourself by doing so.

So no, I have no intention of avoiding running away because I want to face my challenges. Far from it. I just want to make sure that I am not running away without knowledge. Escaping from a bad situation with no solution and no plan at the other end would only result in my own destruction.

So what is the plan?

The plan is to continue to formulating a plan. Running also always gives a sense that you are trying to escape without knowing if you are falling into the arms of something worse. If that is the case, then I must be extra careful not to do that.

However there is the struggle. The temptation to run is strong, when you believe that you are not going to find any situation which is worse than the one you are in. There must, surely, be some opportunity which is better than my own.

But that produces its own problems. If there is no plan, then there is likely that there will be no way to protect myself from whatever resides at the other side of my current torment.

It’s why running away to another country always looked foolish to me. But now it is all my brain will think of. Escape. Run. And run far. It’s a symptom of flight that I cannot follow. It keeps me where I am.

But it means I understand the others now. I understand why there are people who so greatly desire to escape from this country, even if it is just to escape. No plans, just to run.

Sometimes that option looks so much nicer than the one in which you are in. Why must you stay to fight a battle when you do not know if you will win and you do not know if you will make it out alive.

Danger is only escapable when there is actually an escape to be had.

Sadly, there is not one here.

So instead I poor more than a healthy amount of attention into researching any other place that I can get my hands on. To try and make it a ‘running to’ instead of ‘running from.’ To try and put more effort into it than just to escape. I want to have more than escape.

But it still feels like I am running. It still feels fake. That my own thoughts against other’s need to escape have now turned against myself. I know I was wrong, but that doesn’t change these facts.

I hope I will learn to better my own opinion of myself. It is, after all, perfectly reasonable to run.

I am allowing myself that.

So long as I have solid plans, then run.

It is not cowardly to escape.