“Running away” sounds so dramatic and just a bit histrionic – don’t even get me started on the origins of that word, but running away is exactly what I’m longing to do. Am I too old to “run away?” I did just celebrate a birthday, and, sadly enough, most of the time, I can relate more to my professors than to the other students in my MFA program. So, maybe at my age, I should use a euphemism for this desire to skeddadle. I could say I was “taking a holiday,” or “adjusting my locale for a different view.” Regardless, it’d still have the same effect; I’d be ditching this place, probably in the middle of the night – makes it seem more like an adventure – for some place that felt safer, less closed in. Didn’t the Dixie Chicks sing about “Wide Open Spaces?” But I think their version includes “room to make a big mistake.” At my age, I’m thinking I only have room left for teensy, weensy errors. God knows I’ve made enough enormous ones. I’d like to think I’ve learned something along my not-so-yellow brick road and can now succumb to only polite stumbles rather than huge tumbles.
Of course, I’d take Jug with me when I run. Can’t leave the dog. In my whole world, he’s the one thing I can’t lose. Is that sad? I can leave everything behind but the dog (and maybe my coffee maker. Don’t laugh; you’ve never seen this coffee maker. I don’t think you’d leave it either.) Right now, my friends and family are aiming darts at my head. Hold that thought; I’d call or text or email when I landed somewhere soft and fluffy. After all, children are involved here; can’t disappoint the nieces and nephews and one soon-to-be grand-peanut. Everything else can be replaced. Stuff can always be replaced with more stuff – or not. Sometimes I think that stuff starves my soul.
I’ve existed in this place for longer than I lived in my charming North Carolina house. Surreal, but true. I’ve passed my days here without the things that I’ve collected over my life – bits and pieces of my own history, those tangible memories hanging on the walls and sitting on the living room mantle that comfort me when I wonder who I am and what I’m meant to be doing. I know because of being without that I can do without. But maybe I’m being hasty. Perhaps I don’t truly want to box everything and trash it. Rather, I simply need to cull through those memories and dispose of the ones that no longer contain light and peace and joy; darkness has no place in the life I want.
When I close my eyes, I see my sunroom with the big writing desk in one corner and my reading chair in another. I see Jug’s toys scattered across the floors and his bed in the foyer where he shoves it into the sunlit squares beaming through the fanlight. I see my blue bedroom with my white curtains and my bed covered in girly throw pillows. I see my kitchen with its outdated Formica countertops and the sink that I wish were deeper. I see the Crepe Myrtle trees in the yard and the ducks waddling across the narrow street. I see the neighbors tending their flowers with much more deliberate care than I could ever muster and chatting as they stroll by the house. It’s a life I miss. How can my heart skip beats for a life I knew only three months? Perhaps I simply long for the golden-tinged idea of a life. Hmmmh…nope, pretty sure I miss the life itself.
Getting on with the life you have in front of you now presents a challenge when you still have the option of pulling a quick U-turn for the life you planned. What to do? I don’t know what you do, but I hit my knees and pray. Oh goodness, do I pray! And the clouds have yet to part and a voice yet to thunder an answer. I say that a bit facetiously, but I do know that He answers. He just hasn’t answered this: do I stay here and try to live a life for which I cannot even begin to construct a framework, for which I cannot even begin to dream a picture? Or, do I return to school, to a house, to a life I planned and desired but didn’t even begin to live? Which path would He have me tread? Which path leads to His plan? And there is this: am I willing to let my own dreams slip through my fingers like the sand He created to live the life He designed? Free will overwhelms and terrifies. (I wish I were a drinker. Calm down. Not heavily, just socially. I imagine it would make my life a whole lot easier not to mention more fun.)
I sit in the stillness of my room, a room filled with someone else’s memories, and wait. Choosing stillness, choosing to wait stretches the fiber of my being, twists me into shapes and out of shadows, pulls me into His presence in ways I could never find by myself. Choosing silence over screams is a leap of faith, sometimes one that requires a push by someone else or a shove by circumstance. His voice has yet to speak, but He will meet me here just as He will meet you where you are.
The Unexpected Life 