Ever want to run away?

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The Antarctica post hit on something that has been on my mind. Anyone ever just want to run away? I fantasize about it. I think the only thing stopping me is that it would be hard on my kids. They are the only people I feel a real bond with. I'm pretty down right now, I guess. I get so tired. I am not thinking the 'grass is greener'. I think I would keep moving a lot. I have no plan and I am not really doing it. I just think about it.

I know a guy who, when his divorce became final, buried the keys to the house in the yard and went and lived on the streets of Houston through the summer and into the fall. It wasn't until it turned cold that he went back home.

When I was a teen I wanted to run away something fierce. In a sense, I did. I lived in NY but went to college in Iowa. If they hadn't accepted me, I would've went to college in Juneau or New Mexico.

Oh, gosh. I get the urge to move all the time.

Every time I get on a bus or train, and every time I go for a walk, I get the urge to go and keep going until I get somewhere where noone knows me.

I did move around a lot when I was younger. When I was in my teens I bounced between friends and relatives. I don't know why I didn't get further - I think my anxiety and general disorganization kept me in some kind of a parameter - I don't know. I ended up on my own with two little kids when I was still pretty young - mid-twenties. We moved a lot and it was hard on them. This is the longest I have been in one place - about 6 years now. Oh, sorry - I lived in one place until I was 8 years old - that was my longest stretch. I didn't have say in that one, though. I never really tallied it up before. You guys have more adventurous stories than me though. Well, I guess I did have one radically big move where I packed the kids in the car and moved with only what we could fit in the car about 11 hours south. Then we moved 17 hours east. Okay - those are good treks. Man, I am doing a good job of contradicting myself. No wonder I feel restless. Have you ever seen the movie Chocolat? I think of that: When the north wind blows. I get the urge to go. Do you actually move, emimeni?

Oh I wish I could move. I think about it sometimes, but I'm broke. Being broke sucks.

I don't actually have the organizational skills to do that myself. Probably a good thing, though.

All the time. I want to run away from all of my responsibilities and my excruciating loneliness. I want to run away from my failure to succeed and my failure to be loved. I want to run away from the things in my mind that I just can't get free of. However, through all of this angst I have to realize that the one thing I want to get away from is the one thing I can't run away from: Myself.

Ditto to the above. It's as though I've typed it myself...

I daydream about having this big adventure. About packing my copy of the Secret Garden, my laptop, some clothes, shoes and then just hopping on a plane somewhere. It's not that I want to abandon or loose touch with my family. I'd most definitely say in contact with my Mum. But I have this urge to just go out and see what's there. Explore, learn, and experience the world in my own strangely mature yet immature way. I want to go to the top of Eiffel Tower and watch the sun set over the streets of Paris. I want to visit Van Gogh's Museum in Amstersdam and let myself become completely overwhelmed by the connection I feel to his art. I want to document all my travels in a journal and with photos of all the touristy places taken in my detail orientated and creative way.

I think for me the idea of running away, the appeal of it is about starting over. It's about perfection, or more to the point the compulsion to try and obtain it. My life isn't perfect, I'm not perfect. I know this, but childishly I sometimes think that if I did run and start over that everything would be perfect. It's like drawing a picture, if you make a mistake you scrunch it up, throw it aside and start again. Life isn't like that. Otherwise I would have probably moved about ten or more times so far...

I wanted to run away when I was in my mid-late teens. I couldn't stand being part of a family who saw me as a loser who would grow up to be a useless eater.

I have fantasized about doing similar things all my life. My fantasy is the ultimate road trip. I would want to have one other person (preferably a romantic interest) with me to be my "partner in crime", so to speak, and share the experience with me. I would start out at the southernmost point in the continental US in Key West, Florida and end up at the end of the Dalton Highway in Alaska. Along the way, I would visit historic places, national parks and museums. I want to see the Smithsonian the Guggenheim, The Met and others on the journey. I would want to see Mount Rushmore, Yosemite, and Yellowstone too. I want to drive epic roads like The Pacific Coast highway, Route 66 and the Alaska-Canada highway. There is so much I haven't seen in the US that I want to see, not to mention the rest of the world. I hate the fact that I will likely never see most of it in my lifetime because the realities of life and finances make it nearly impossible to do so.

I am from Europe.
The furtherst place I ended up trying to run away from my family was New Zealand.
It did not really work.
Leaving place physically is mostly not a solution for general issues,
but surely it helps with specifics.

I did my share of bouncing around when I was younger. After the initial excitement wore off, I still had the same problems and wasn't really moving forward at all. There is still nothing like that sense of open promise when headed for a new somewhere though.
When I was a child I'd run away from home... and end up back chagrined a few hours later. I would countdown until I was eighteen and could have the resources to do it for real.

Only all the time.

I want to run away, but I don't have the guts. I have tried to before, but I didn't really know where to go and I felt childish, so I just returned home before it got to a point where everyone would start worrying.