Running Away...

I was talking with some friends last night and they mentioned how often I am traveling.  Someone mentioned that I was running away (It might have been me)...but I am not.  There is nothing here in Ojai to run away from.  I have a good life here, it is stable and functional and lovely.  I have my family and friends and live in a community that, on the whole, supports and loves each other.  I am not running away, so much as I am running to.

I long for time alone, away from the tasks that hold my every day.  I long for open road, vistas unseen and adventures to be had.  I long for redwoods and beaches littered with nothing but rocks and sand.   Rivers that just allow me to sit idle on their shores and take in the beauty. My traveling is about coming to know me better, not running away from the life I have.

We joked about the fact that I live alone and what could I possibly be running from...but as I thought about it all evening, I realized, that though I have been a runner all my life, I am no longer running away, I am now running to places where I can feel safe, ok and happy being me.

It isn’t like I don’t like myself at home.  I just don’t have complete access to all the parts of me.  There is something inside me that only the open road can grant access to.  I don’t know why but there is a part of me that just gets buried in the mundane tasks of daily living and I have to extricate myself in order to feel completely, truly alive.

Lately, I have been having some relationship issues.  Not dating relationships really, but intimate relationships.  And it is painful.  I am not sure why people who claim to love me (or used to love me), malign me every chance they get.  I do not understand it and am baffled about what to do about it.  And I really wish this last road trip and all the time I had to think and ponder resulted in me having answers to these intimate inquiries.  But alas, it did not.

I will own that thinking and feeling the pain of the slings and arrows from those who are supposed to have my back does make me want to run away.  Not from home, but from the people who are completely letting me down and the permanency of those relationships which makes them hard to run away from but remaining in them is also not a great option for my heart.

Running away doesn’t solve the problem, only provides temporary relief.  And I will be the first to admit I have done a lot of temporary relief seeking in my life.  I want to do something else now but am somewhat stymied about how and what and when.

I am very clear I do not want short term gain for long term pain.  I am much happier when I cut the “short term pain, for long term gain” deal.  I know this but it doesn’t buff out the allure of running.  There is a strong urgency within me to change my number, sell the house and move to the woods providing only very few people my new location and information.  

This would not be the first time this happened.  I just bolt.  But I am not that young anymore and have responsibilities that make that whole endeavor not possible.  And I don’t want to continue to practice connection through disconnection.  It has never worked, like at all.  And yet, yet I am still very much emotionally committed to that being a workable format.

So today, I am not running.  I am staying put.  I’m working through the complications of relationshiping in today’s modern world and all of my own dysfunction that seems to be never ending.

Again, still...