There's Escape in Escaping
But somehow the dirt and dust under my tires always seem to settle in the same place.
Splendidly selfish, charmingly helpless
Excellent fun ’til you get to know her
Then she runs like it’s a race
I’ve always been a runner. Whenever life becomes chaotic for me, I feel a need to find something — anything — that I can control.
Well, “runner” is not the right word. If I’m running — you should too. Something is definitely chasing me. I’m more of a PUSHER. Things become too overwhelming and I feel a need to push people away rather than let them pull me close. I am not someone who is used to being comforted and cared for. I handle things on my own in the silent overthinking madness of the rabbit holes of my mind. I rarely cry. I rarely let myself truly feel anything too strongly. The one emotion that I know I can handle is anger.
That always means that whoever is trying to be a comfort to me at any given chaotic crisis — becomes a target for how I can’t feel about it.
Nothing brings out my intense fear of abandonment like a crisis. If I push someone away before they have a chance to leave me then it’s my own doing. No one left me, I left them. It’s oxygen. There’s a freedom in that first breath drawn in the agony of losing someone at your own hands rather than awaiting the day that they see you for what you are — not worth the drama you come with — that justifies an ending you never wanted.
My mind is a terrifying place.
Ended with the slam of a door
Then he’ll call her a whore
Wish he wouldn’t be sore
But as she was leaving
It felt like breathing
All her fuckin’ lives
Flashed before her eyes
It feels like the time
She fell through the ice
Then came out alive
Getting out alive. That is always my goal. My only goal. I live in survival mode but surviving isn’t living and eventually — it’s just fucking exhausting. Pushing and running and escaping and surviving — it’s all too much.
Lose a marriage, gain a penthouse. Gain a bunch of chronic illnesses, lose a career. Lose your mind, gain a tumor. Lose two pounds of pressure on your intestines, gain a giant incision, and feel like you’ve been gutted.
Lose the will to keep fighting, gain a soulmate…?
Didn’t see that one coming.
Four weeks ago, he suddenly appeared. A blast from the past that felt like the present and future without any time lost at all. We fell back into lockstep and ease of laughing conversations as though the last time we spoke was yesterday… but really, we’ve spent more than half of our lives parted.
When we met, we were instantly drawn to each other. There was an undeniable connection. A strong friendship and love for one another that was a drug I never wanted to admit addiction to. If admitting it is the first step to recovery, I’d never say the words. There is no recovering from him. His pull is a strong ache that runs straight through me. A feeling that I don’t have words to describe and have never felt before. His overdose is my laughter.
I’ve never believed in anything in my life. How could I? What kind of higher power should I thank for all I’ve been through? Who do I scream at that I’ve had enough and it’s time to pick on someone else for a while? And I was okay with my lack of belief system. Until he told me the reason that everything was so easy between us was that our souls recognized their counterparts.
Damn it, that’s a good line.
But it wasn’t. He doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. And knowing that about him… there’s that ache again.
When I had to let him go, I disconnected myself from the pain. He would have a happy life and even if it was without me, I wanted that for him. I know he wanted it for me too. Happiness was just never the card I drew from the deck.
But suddenly, as I was sitting completely alone, scared, and sick, wasting time on my computer — a message popped up. And he was back.
For four weeks, a short time by any normal adult calendar, I have known with every step of the torturous journey that lay ahead — I was not and would not be alone anymore. We live on teenage time. Everything is urgent and immediate and all that matters is right now because right now we have each other.
It’s strange when you realize that you’ve lived many lives in the years between being yourself. I am completely myself with him. The only version of me that he knows is the true version of me. Someone almost no one has met in many years.
Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires
Now I’m missing your smile, hear me out
We could just ride around
And the road not taken looks real good now
And it always leads to you in my hometown
He has never been a stranger to me and I have no idea why. I knew him and I saw him from the second we met. I knew I couldn’t hide from him. I couldn’t morph into some ideal in his mind to become a momentary standard — a lie I couldn’t hold onto forever. He just got me. And somehow, just me — was someone he loved.
It was exactly the same when he came back four weeks ago and when he called this morning and when we’ll talk later. We could say goodbye a million times and spread lightyears between us but we will remain us. There will always be another hello. There will always be the true version of only my purest self reflected in the blue of his eyes. Sometimes I think they turn gray just for me. If eyes are a reflection of the soul and our souls are counterparts then perhaps the storms that gather over the blue are caused by my moodiness.
My eyes turn gray too. Probably at the same exact time.
Some connections simply can’t be explained and questioning them is a pointless waste of the time you should be savoring.
I have spent my life giving pieces of myself away. I have been ravaged by time and yet when I see myself through him, time never existed at all. I grab the phone with the violent fury that my mind has learned to accept and within two words spoken in a voice I’d recognize anywhere — I remember how to cry.
I feel. I am open and exposed and I don’t want to show him the damage that I know I can’t hide forever. I want to remain simply myself for just a bit longer. Just the one that laughs with him and speaks the same words at the same time and thinks through the same viewpoints. He wants me to show him. He offers me safety that I’ve never known. And every cell in my body starts to scream.
PUSH.
If I make him go away, I can hide in my many personas. I can be an ideal to another stranger who will never be more than a face I’ve already forgotten. I can be angry at the pain I don’t want to feel. I can refuse vulnerability and force the clock forward, ticking away labored breaths that could stop for all I care.
I can’t do that with him. I can’t hide. I can’t forget. I can’t be angry. I can’t hate my lungs for functioning.
He won’t budge. No one ever stayed before. Pushing people away has always been so easy. Show them the monster mommy created and they’re gone without even so much as a glimpse in the rearview but he doesn’t fear me. He takes my verbal venom and absorbs it until the dust settles.
And I stop pushing.
I stop fighting.
I stop running.
I stop trying to escape.
I collapse against him. Exhausted.
He pulls me to him without trying at all and whispers calming words of another way of life. It doesn’t always have to hurt. He will protect me.
When the dust settles, there is only him. And I am only me.
And we are everything.
It always leads to you in my hometown
Lyrics contained in this piece written by Taylor Swift — songs included: The Bolter and Tis The Damn Season
Thank you Aiden!