Escape

escape… it’s a tickly, crawly little unsettling feeling. i felt it creeping up my arms as i stood at the sink, my hands wreathed in hot soapy water.

i sponged down an ice-cream bowl and tried to shake it, i squeezed my eyes shut and tried to absorb myself in the background noises- the music playing on the radio, the sound of the rain on the roof, the clinking of porcelain and silverware beneath my fingers. but the feeling seeped back slowly into the corner of my mind, drowning out all other senses.

‘escape,’ it said softly.
i sighed… so it begins again.

every couple months i am suddenly, without warning- overtaken with this overwhelming urge to escape, to change something i don’t understand. at times i have to sit alone for hours trying to figure out exactly what it is i want. and most times.. what i want is completely impossible, so i end up doing something stupid and desperate to try to shake that feeling, to feel grounded and find balance again.

several times i’ve pierced myself, or got a tattoo, or changed my hair.. it’s always something silly like that.

so i stood in the kitchen and toweled off my hands, desperately searching around in my mind for a scenario in which i could envision myself at peace again. the last time i felt this way was a tough one… i wanted to be in a foreign country (Ireland, really), with my family around me. we would be traveling the world. that was a particularly strong episode. and of course i could not bring this situation about, and did not think piercing something yet again or marring my body even further would calm my shaking heart down, so that time i just cried and cried for days.

i glanced down at the counter, at a mug of old coffee. this escape definitely involves coffee. i thought of all the familiar places- my friends’ houses, the various rooms in my house, the coffee shop, work. this escape definitely does not involve these places. it’s them i want to escape from, as usual, i think. and it’s not even as if they're constantly invading my space or pestering me or it’s just their essence permeates so thickly into every fiber, this city, that i cannot extricate myself from, and it's essences tire me.

i need coffee. and i need to be working on something, feeling productive. i need to be able to stay up all night in a place that isn’t my house, and know i won’t be kicked out. i need to feel comfortable.
and i need to be with someone who makes me feel like myself. i want to be with someone who loves me.

but that’s not going to happen, and i can’t seem to bring that about, no matter how hard i try to tell myself that i don’t need it, i don’t want it. so it appears as if this time i’ll just have to cry and cry again..

i wish i had a project or a major task to accomplish. so i can do all of these things- drink coffee and feel productive and be up 24-hours drinking Starbucks, hoping to bump into someone who might change my life.

but i don't, and my heart is tugging and bursting out of my chest in ESCAPE and trying to tear off to nowhere, and i cannot satiate it and guide it to a calm place to ease its shaking, and it begs me and throws itself against the walls of its cage and i feel my eyes tearing up and my lip beginning to tremble as i helplessly remain put, in this house, in this cage, and can do nothing but watch as my poor pleading heart breaks to pieces.

sigh. maybe i just need sad music. i just need to play music to whisk me away from this house, and coffee to calm my soul and drown my unsettled aching feelings with its warm, dark aroma. then maybe i’ll forget about all this world, this world full of alien joys and laughter and pain and heartbreak and anguish and colors, this world that doesn’t seem to involve me. that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with me, that i witness and partake in, but refuses to share with me even a small portion of its colors.
and as i sit in my dark blue cave so separate from everything else i begin to watch this outside world with growing cynicism and bitterness, and begin to believe that i don’t want any part in it.

and that, i believe, is how a heart hardens.