Hum

Today I feel like I need to get out of here. I spent an hour yesterday looking at airfares and planning trips that will never happen. Where did the perpetual stir-craziness come from? I wasn't always like this. Sixteen was a really bad year for me and I think something inside of me just snapped a little, even though I'm happier than ever now. My tolerance for stress is lower. My flight instinct is stronger. I seem to have a need for perpetual motion. Where'd that come from? I was the calm child, the one who could sit still, the one who could read books for hours without budging. Now I have problems sitting through a movie.

I don't understand the agitation or the constant need to move or flee or run away. I don't have anything to run away from.

I remember talking to my sister about it. "Do you feel like you get tired of places quickly? Like they go stale faster for you? Do you feel like you have moved on before everyone else has?"

"Are you always just passing through?"

I feel that way. Passing through, touching, never staying, never sticking.

Second semester of senior year, when all of my graduating class fanned out across the country/other countries, I went the farthest. I went almost exactly halfway around the world. Twelve-hour jet lag. It felt good to leave. I had been waiting for it for years; waiting to LIVE instead of just waiting and waiting to finally be loose.

I'm going to school on the other side of the country. My mother said, half-jokingly, "people are going to think you don't like us."

I didn't know what to say to that. I love my family, actually. I miss them, kind of. I am bad at missing people. Including people I love. This makes me feel broken. I thought a lot about divorcing myself from home. Going away as an end, not a stage. I miss the place and the visual associations and the memories attached to them. Familiar things that I thought were beautiful, over time. I am confused by my ability to completely romanticize everything and to simultaneously be unromantic. How does that work, exactly?

My mother took it as an insult, though I know she wouldn't have told me that. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone. It just felt necessary, and distance is just ever-increasing and meaningless numbers outside of a certain radius. But I don't know why it felt necessary. Am I just running away from someone who I used to be?

Whatever it is, I want to flee to everywhere.