Hey, it’s just one night, it’s not like it’s forever
I just want to feel better

How many times have we looked for an escape route in order to “feel better”? The fine art of escaping takes many forms – we all have our vices and they seem be exascerbated by whatever is ailing us at the time. We ache to escape when things get tough – when we want to forget the pain in our lives. My childhood left little room for me to escape a situation I might have found hurtful or stressful – I read to escape. Books were my safety net and safe haven. However, adulthood opened up a Pandora’s box of escape methods. I went from very limited parameters to no parameters.

For a long time, I didn’t feel the need to push my escape boundaries – I nudged them a little, sure, but for several years I never full fledged sacked myself up against a wall. My first real grownup, big-girl, “I can do whatever I want” escape came in the winter of 2011. I had gotten some pretty unexpected and hurtful news from one of my best friends and suddenly, the idea of reading seemed very ten years old of me. I found myself in a blur of actions and feelings that landed me, alone, on the floor of my apartment. From cold to cold – a friend came and transported me from the cool linoleum of my kitchen to the cold and hard bathroom tile. It’s funny how we hit these walls with such force, yet we visit them again and again – no matter how badly they can make us feel.

So, once you find a boundary that doesn’t dull the pain anymore, you move on to the next one… and the next, then one above the last one, etc. We climb the rungs of the numb ladder in hopes to find something that will squelch the longing, the pain, the ache, or the empty forever. But, it’s not to be found. It’s a bottomless pit that begs to be filled. In those moments when alcohol numbs, drugs soothe, other people distract, sleep blankets, we are temporarily satiated. We forget – the line to the top of our empty gauge is full – until the escape stops. It comes to a hault. We learn to ride out the escape route for as long as we can – we stretch it as far as it will go and each route lasts a different time than another, so perhaps we combine our escape routes in hopes of creating one giant ride of oblivion.

The thing is – we can never escape. We try and perhaps for a time we are transported to a place where we forget, temporarily, or our wounds are salved. But, unless we are willing to make peace with whatever is causing us to run toward escaping, we will never truly be free. In more recent times, I found myself trying to get out of town for a couple of days when I was going through something that shot up my “escape” flag. After doing this a couple of times, I realized I was missing out on really wonderful moments with friends and family and myself because I was still consumed with what I was trying to escape. It almost felt like a burden because I was so entwined in my own feelings I failed to notice so many things. When I started to change my attitude and stopped using things I loved as ways of escape – traveling, people, the ocassional glass of wine – I enjoyed them for what they were and how they enriched my life, not how they could be used to duct tape the broken pieces of me together.

I’m still learning how to “cope” with life as an adult – I still nudge my boundaries and I’m still tempted to flee. But, I am getting better at being a little bit more gentle with myself and allowing those feelings and emotions, no matter how negative or painful, to exist and be with me until it is their time to pack up and move on. I don’t use experiences or people or things I enjoy to be bandaids for emotional craters that are far too deep for them to cover. Running away from those feelings only seems to make them more eager to stay. Every experience is a lesson – trying to block it out can cause us to miss out on something that in the end could be more beautiful and powerful than we ever imagined.