have you ever dreamed of running away?

and if so, please tell me where you'd go...

Content warning: mentions of eating disorders and suicidal ideation.

I was 14 when I first got the idea to run away. Deeply entrenched in my eating disorder, I felt — at the time — that my only two options were either to die or to get the hell out of here.

So I’d lie in bed at night contemplating how to withdraw the $193 from my debit card without arousing the iron-clad parental scrutiny I was already under. I thought hard about planning my exit…. I’d do it at night using the emergency fire ladder under my bed, knowing all too well that while every door triggered the alarm, a few windows would not. It would be a small leap to the ground, but if I used the window towards the opposite side of the house from my parents’ bedroom, my landing might not wake them up.

I had quietly been mapping which of the floorboards in the old 1920s house creaked upon compression and which didn’t. I knew which stairs to my former attic bedroom would give me away and which would hold me gingerly, maybe silently praying for my success. There were 4 windows on either side of the attic; I knew which one opened the easiest and also sat right above some bushes that might cushion my fall.

There were two blocks from our house to the bus station. Not exactly my prime option as an emaciated child living in a rather violent and unfriendly city. But what did I know of consequences, really?

I wondered if there was anything I could say in a goodbye letter that might stop my mom from calling in the national guard the moment she woke to find my bed empty. Could I play on her sympathies? Could I tell her outright it was this or death? Or should I say nothing and leave behind my wiped cell phone and any other technological link she’d use to find me? A plea for her to let me go.

I knew it wouldn’t help. My methodical convictions would be fruitless in the end. The farthest I’d ever get, even in my fantasy, was maybe 200-300 miles from my house before some uniform or another threw me in the squad car and took me back home.

Which isn’t to say very much considering had I seen my wanderlust a bit further, maybe I’d make it to California after all… but what then?

I certainly wouldn’t be eating. I’d have exhausted my measly savings. I suppose I’d be relegated to live amongst the legions of homeless who find themselves in sunny San Diego. And me, a white, scrawny, inexperienced, bitter, 14-year-old girl. I probably still would’ve ended up dead.

But at least this option had hope. My alternative options weren’t pretty. The other kind of escape I thought might save me from myself when all roads of my runaway inevitably brought me home was finite and ugly.

I didn’t like my options. I don’t think I wanted to go out by such pitiful means, but I also wasn’t looking to further traumatize my loved ones. So night after night I sat paralyzed in bed, hating myself for every passing moment of inaction — the inaction that was saving my life.

Unsurprisingly, I must have emanated distress beyond my usual for the time, because there we all were, seated in our weekly family therapy session a few weeks into my diligent mental planning. Wedged between my parents, mute and counting as high as I could in my head to pass the time, when a rough knock on the door broke through my concentrated dissociation. Two men dressed in the all-too-familiar green scrubs of the hospital that had claimed the greater part of my year so far — and for which I had been freed only 2 months prior — entered the room. Their eyes fixed on me, not needing a photo or indicator of any kind to recognize the lifeless, grey-tinged skin, protruding bones, and dead eyes that denoted my obvious need for saving.

I bolted from the room. But it was all too late.

They found me curled up behind a water fountain on the 8th floor. It took them two hours, but it could’ve taken them 10 for all the gumption I’d found to flee further.

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Now I’m 28. Tanned skin, pink hair roughly cut by yours truly into a chin-length bob. I’m married, a homeowner, and carry a respectable job title… but still there exists that insatiable need to run.

I did run too, graduating college gratefully debt-free. I didn’t hesitate at my chance to make it to California, this time a sanctioned departure by all parties. I moved around restlessly while I was there, boyfriend and dogs in tow. And I’d like to think I tried to make it work… but wherever I’ve gone, there I am. Forever forcing my square right-angled sharpness into perpetually rounded and too shallow holes.

Today I woke up picturing a shitty little apartment somewhere that only I could make cute, in a city or a town only I could fall in love with. I wondered if I would leave a note, but I’m still just as much at a loss for the words to explain myself.

This time no militant unit would hunt me down. I have money, though it still feels as insignificant as my $200 did 14 years ago. I have a car and could likely keep my phone for navigation and music. I could buy gas, and odds are I would try to feed myself along the way.

But I still have no destination. Nowhere I can see myself going where I might actually be free. For all that I can see the me that makes it, I know too well she doesn’t exist.

I’m not convinced, having seen what I’ve seen in these last 14 years, that the grass really is any greener on any side.

So I’m left only with the therapeutic tools that band-aid my gaping heart. What did that 14-year-old me need then that I could possibly give her now in the hopes that she might quiet down? What manner of self-acceptance and feeling my feelings might stifle her back into responsible silence?

But am I then no better than the green-clad men who came to take me away and who force-fed me back into reticent compliance?

What is the point of having all of the things I was ever told to want, only for the weight of them to be more than I ever learned to carry?

The inaction carries that much more shame now — both in the wanting to go and the not.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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