Run away, run, again and forever!I remember a clutter of hazy thoughts I had as a child, but some striking memories never left me, and they happen to be the many times I plotted to run away.
The very odd thing about such occurrences in my childhood is that these ideas came at a time when everything was well, and at a time when I was very young.
Many a time, my mother would tell me off for something I had done, and she would use words that may not have been so harsh, but they hurt me. They hurt me because I was aware the words used were too strong compared to what the misdeed deserved. I would run to my room and cry my eyes out, then draw from the deep sorrow to make myself feel detached from everything. As soon as I reached that state of complete emotional detachment, I would drag the massive old suitcase buried in the wardrobe and I would place in it all my favorite toys and perhaps a few clothes for good measure. I would sneak into the kitchen and grab a pack of biscuits (food for the road, you see) and place it inside the suitcase that I would then drag along with me all the way to the front door. I would stop there for a moment, glance around me and say in a voice loud enough for my mother to hear: "Good bye mother, I'm leaving."
She would come into the corridor and stare at me blankly before shaking her head in disbelief.
The first time I did this, she took the time to reason with me. She asked me to think about where exactly I was thinking to go. I couldn't answer. I just wanted to leave and that was as far as my planning went. I was no more than 6 years old. Seeing that I refused to discuss it further, she would simply sigh and say: "Well then, go." And so I would, but the funny thing was that each time this would happen, I would leave a little further from the house so that in effect, the very first time I took a suitcase and decided to 'leave', I made it only as far as the front door.
The time after that, I made it all the way to the elevator.
The time after that, I made it all the way to the ground floor hallway.
Then one day I made it all the way into the street, where I stared around me, at the traffic and endless crowds of people and... I realised I had no idea where to go next. That's when I stopped trying to 'run away' from home.
And that's when I began to plot my escape outside of home.
I remember trying to run away from school, once. I was still around 6 years of age and I had one best friend at the time. I remember her quite strikingly because although we became 'best' friends, I remember liking the fact that she listened to me and was easy to influence. I had this thing back then that made me very bossy and I tended to impose my ways on others because I just felt my ways were better than all others. Before lunch time, as we were playing in the playground, I told her that we should run away. School was a prison and we needed to escape into some great adventure, and since life was so boring, we had to make the adventure happen: therefore we had to escape the school walls and discover the world. She agreed with my idea at once, and I began to plan our escape.
We went into the girls bathroom and I noticed the windows that could be reached by climbing on the toilet seat. I turned to my friend and told her that was our escape. Of course we would have to be very mindfull of the teachers lurking in the playground, and I thought the best time to make a run for it would be if we finished lunch quickly while the number of adults was at its lowest outside. Although I can no longer remember the detail of my thinking, I had gone through all the main points that would ensure the success of our escape... but we got caught at the last minute for a stupid error that involved me dumping the contents of my plate in one kid's tray so as to finish my lunch 'earlier' (as the adults would never let you leave the table unless you had eaten a certain set amount of food). I guess that kid got stuck at the table with too much food to finish (I had also dumped my best friend's food in his plate) and some adult must have asked him how come he had so much in his tray... and he must have said it was me. So that time we got caught and I vaguely remember being asked why I had dumped all the food in that boy's tray.
I think I shrugged and said I'd asked him if he wanted some more and he'd said yes.
The other time I plotted my escape, I was around 9 years old. I was playing outside the house with a school friend who also lived nearby. We were sitting on top of a low brickwall, swinging our legs and watching the older kids play football in the middle of the square. I remember getting that sudden wave of mental suffocation that comes and goes... just like a wave. I glanced up at the sky and asked my friend if she also felt like a prisoner. She glanced at me and nodded, but I don't think she had a clue what I was on about. To be fair, I had no idea myself why I was feeling that way, either. I asked her if she'd ever dreamed of running away into the unknown, just to at least see how the world worked else where. Maybe life was more interesting and 'adventurous', even 'magical' some place else and we just needed to find that place ourselves.
She said she had sometimes imagined that she was running away. She had a bad family and her father would often be the kind to beat up his kids. I asked her why she had never actually tried and she told me that every time she couldn't go through with it because 'where would she go?'
I tried to convince her that we should give it a go - run away together into the wide world. At first she seemed very excited by the idea and we began to plan how we would manage to sneak out of our homes... but soon she was heaving a deep sigh and finally said: "We can't do it... We're too small, and we wouldn't know where to go. And I'd miss my family."
"But we can try," I retorded (or something close to that). "And we'd have each other."
"Well, you try, but I'm not doing it," was her final answer before jumping to her feet to join the group of older kids playing football.
I remained sitting on that brickwall, gazing pensively around me. As much as I felt the urge to escape into the unknown, I suddenly got that realisation that I couldn't just do it on my own. Alone in the wide world, trying to find that perfect place just wasn't the same as being with another person that experienced it with you.
And that was the last time I planned to run away.
The very odd thing about such occurrences in my childhood is that these ideas came at a time when everything was well, and at a time when I was very young.
Many a time, my mother would tell me off for something I had done, and she would use words that may not have been so harsh, but they hurt me. They hurt me because I was aware the words used were too strong compared to what the misdeed deserved. I would run to my room and cry my eyes out, then draw from the deep sorrow to make myself feel detached from everything. As soon as I reached that state of complete emotional detachment, I would drag the massive old suitcase buried in the wardrobe and I would place in it all my favorite toys and perhaps a few clothes for good measure. I would sneak into the kitchen and grab a pack of biscuits (food for the road, you see) and place it inside the suitcase that I would then drag along with me all the way to the front door. I would stop there for a moment, glance around me and say in a voice loud enough for my mother to hear: "Good bye mother, I'm leaving."
She would come into the corridor and stare at me blankly before shaking her head in disbelief.
The first time I did this, she took the time to reason with me. She asked me to think about where exactly I was thinking to go. I couldn't answer. I just wanted to leave and that was as far as my planning went. I was no more than 6 years old. Seeing that I refused to discuss it further, she would simply sigh and say: "Well then, go." And so I would, but the funny thing was that each time this would happen, I would leave a little further from the house so that in effect, the very first time I took a suitcase and decided to 'leave', I made it only as far as the front door.
The time after that, I made it all the way to the elevator.
The time after that, I made it all the way to the ground floor hallway.
Then one day I made it all the way into the street, where I stared around me, at the traffic and endless crowds of people and... I realised I had no idea where to go next. That's when I stopped trying to 'run away' from home.
And that's when I began to plot my escape outside of home.
I remember trying to run away from school, once. I was still around 6 years of age and I had one best friend at the time. I remember her quite strikingly because although we became 'best' friends, I remember liking the fact that she listened to me and was easy to influence. I had this thing back then that made me very bossy and I tended to impose my ways on others because I just felt my ways were better than all others. Before lunch time, as we were playing in the playground, I told her that we should run away. School was a prison and we needed to escape into some great adventure, and since life was so boring, we had to make the adventure happen: therefore we had to escape the school walls and discover the world. She agreed with my idea at once, and I began to plan our escape.
We went into the girls bathroom and I noticed the windows that could be reached by climbing on the toilet seat. I turned to my friend and told her that was our escape. Of course we would have to be very mindfull of the teachers lurking in the playground, and I thought the best time to make a run for it would be if we finished lunch quickly while the number of adults was at its lowest outside. Although I can no longer remember the detail of my thinking, I had gone through all the main points that would ensure the success of our escape... but we got caught at the last minute for a stupid error that involved me dumping the contents of my plate in one kid's tray so as to finish my lunch 'earlier' (as the adults would never let you leave the table unless you had eaten a certain set amount of food). I guess that kid got stuck at the table with too much food to finish (I had also dumped my best friend's food in his plate) and some adult must have asked him how come he had so much in his tray... and he must have said it was me. So that time we got caught and I vaguely remember being asked why I had dumped all the food in that boy's tray.
I think I shrugged and said I'd asked him if he wanted some more and he'd said yes.
The other time I plotted my escape, I was around 9 years old. I was playing outside the house with a school friend who also lived nearby. We were sitting on top of a low brickwall, swinging our legs and watching the older kids play football in the middle of the square. I remember getting that sudden wave of mental suffocation that comes and goes... just like a wave. I glanced up at the sky and asked my friend if she also felt like a prisoner. She glanced at me and nodded, but I don't think she had a clue what I was on about. To be fair, I had no idea myself why I was feeling that way, either. I asked her if she'd ever dreamed of running away into the unknown, just to at least see how the world worked else where. Maybe life was more interesting and 'adventurous', even 'magical' some place else and we just needed to find that place ourselves.
She said she had sometimes imagined that she was running away. She had a bad family and her father would often be the kind to beat up his kids. I asked her why she had never actually tried and she told me that every time she couldn't go through with it because 'where would she go?'
I tried to convince her that we should give it a go - run away together into the wide world. At first she seemed very excited by the idea and we began to plan how we would manage to sneak out of our homes... but soon she was heaving a deep sigh and finally said: "We can't do it... We're too small, and we wouldn't know where to go. And I'd miss my family."
"But we can try," I retorded (or something close to that). "And we'd have each other."
"Well, you try, but I'm not doing it," was her final answer before jumping to her feet to join the group of older kids playing football.
I remained sitting on that brickwall, gazing pensively around me. As much as I felt the urge to escape into the unknown, I suddenly got that realisation that I couldn't just do it on my own. Alone in the wide world, trying to find that perfect place just wasn't the same as being with another person that experienced it with you.
And that was the last time I planned to run away.
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