Fantasizing About Exit Routes
I can feel myself retreating. There is the possibility of commitment to a job, a lease, a full year in this place and my feet are starting to drag. When night comes, I want to pack my stuff up, grab my dog and drive somewhere new. I am more scared to stay in this state, to accept a job without a fixed end date, than I have been to move somewhere new without knowing anyone. The prospect of committing to being here feels in some way like I’m attaching myself to a ticking time bomb. But I do not know if the bomb is a figment of my imagination or if it is an actual threat.
I have a hard time discerning anxiety from intuition in these scenarios. Is this the right choice? Should I accept a job here? Is a year long lease too long? I went to a job interview today, and it went well. But when I got in my car to drive home, I wanted to keep driving. That whisper was back: if you don’t keep moving, Nicole, you will be caught. Trapped.
Over these past few days, while contemplating this potential commitment, my mind has gone down all its typical avenues of trying to run. I am planning my exit routes.
I try to control control control. There is no trust in these moments of choosing. I don’t trust things will work out in my favor. I don’t trust there is some bigger picture, some higher being looking out. I don’t trust that maybe - just maybe, Nicole - this could lead to something beautiful. Something that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Instead, I try to will things into existence by white-knuckling through life.
It is hard to put into words these emotions coming up. I imagine a funnel with too thick of a substance to let itself drain properly. These feelings are stuck in my body without an accurate description to bring them outside of myself. How can I properly convey the urge to run, and the instinct to find warmth inside? I both want to be here and desire to be anywhere else. I want stability, routine but am terrified of boredom. I miss my family but am hesitant of being left alone with most of them. I do not know how to exist at home and be a person that is her own separate being. There’s this pervasive fear that planting roots means sacrificing novelty and freedom and the ability to change. There is so much to experience in this world. I am reminded of that fact every time I go somewhere new and ask myself: what would it be like to live here? Maybe I live in a fantasy land where the only places I can be who I want is places where no one knows who I am.
Choosing to commit to something outside of myself feels like an entanglement. Feels as if I am giving up the control of my life. After college, a guy I had known since I was thirteen let me know he liked me. Wanted to date. Very casually. Even though there was nothing more I wanted - to be desired by a guy I felt safe with - I was left with the same bodily sensation: a desperation to sever the looming entanglement and go someplace new. I remember sitting on my sister’s couch fantasizing about how easy it would be to get in my car and drive west. The black hills are only nine hours from here. I can reach Glacier in eighteen. In the end, I texted him that I couldn’t do whatever this is.
This is the pattern of my life: getting what I have wanted and then running from it. I have chosen what I perceive as my own autonomy over connection with others countless times. It feels cruel to those I love and also unkind to myself.
I have lived so many of my years being in resistance to the things, people, experiences that have come my way. I want to be open to possibility and joy and newness. I want to stop running. I want to be home without an escape plan. I have always had one foot out the door - but truly, I want to come inside.