About a week ago I was craving a runaway day. Those urges probably come more often than they should. I decided to leave right after my early morning class and I was walking back home, I came to the top of this hill with a view that I see every day of the entire valley. But with the oranges and the yellows of the leaves, the foggy morning light, the comforting sounds of crunching leaves, chirping birds, and the vague hum of a car struggling up a hill to campus...how could I not love this valley? How could I spend this morning wanting to run away from it all?
I left anyways.
I was speeding down a 7 laned interstate, screaming the lyrics of a love song I couldn't relate to and coughing so much that my windshield began to fog up. Maybe everything about that moment was me. Maybe I'm the interstate with so many lanes to accommodate for so many lives rushing to and from their hectic lives like all the thoughts, interest, ideas and emotions that speed around in my mind. Some get cut off, others speed faster and some get pulled over for their nonsense. Maybe I'm the love song that someone else is screaming to. Maybe I'm the pounding of a rhythm that gets stuck in your head or maybe I'm the lyrics that don't make much sense unless their rhymes are analyzed. Maybe I'm the sickness someone can't shake that you have to keep coughing up. Maybe I'm the tickle in my own throat. Maybe I'm the reason that I can't stand to see myself unhappy and maybe that's why I don't let my perceptions fog up like the windshield. I blast the hot air of my own head until it all comes into clarity.
I did fun things that day and spent time with people I care about, but that day was about me. It was about that drive and it was about how I feel the most like myself when I'm running away.