ready to rage and ready to run

Fumi Nakamura, “The Noise Must Become Music”

I want to blow up my life. Quit my job, put my belongings in my sister’s basement, grab my dog and drive west in my van.

I feel trapped by the systems I exist within, and the people who are in positions of power within those systems. Leadership at work is changing my role. My landlord is sexist. The government is controlled by out-of-touch billionaires. It does not feel like anyone with power over my life is working with me. I am exhausted by swimming upstream in the current they have created for me. I am ready to tread ashore and quietly wander into the woods to create my own peaceful existence where I do not have any overlords.

I want to scream and I want to curl into a ball and I want to go live in the woods in a cabin I built entirely by myself. It remains so difficult for me to be tied to people and places and things that I feel restrict my ability to move freely throughout my own existence. When I feel trapped, my urge to run becomes painful to ignore.

At some point I have to make peace with the fact that these systems govern my life, and while I can work to change them, I still do have to exist within them. But right now, I am irritated. I am angry. I am ready to rage. I am ready to run. I am not ready to make peace, not yet.