I sneak into the living room and crank the air down so the air conditioner kicks on. As soon as I hear the whir of the system, I make my exit. My heart doesn’t race; I’m not afraid. I do this almost every night. I hear the crunch of rocks and grass beneath my feet as the freedom of the night sweeps around me. My friends are waiting down the street. I jump in, and we ride.
I never could sit still as a young teen. Some time around the age of twelve, I learned I could leave the house, and when I got back, no one was going to do anything about it. I would take all of the steps to make sure I didn’t get caught on the way out because that was the most important part. If they caught me on the way out, I would be stuck.
Many nights I would come back home and find I couldn’t get back in through the window I jumped out of, or the door I went out through would be locked, so I would just knock on the door until my mom got up and let me in. She wasn’t happy, but at some point I think she just gave up and accepted it for what it was. She had a runner, and nothing was going to keep me in. She tried installing alarms on the doors, and even nailed my windows shut with five-inch nails once, but I just slipped my dresser in front of my bedroom door and dug them out with scissors.
Home wasn’t the only place I ran from. Even when I stayed the night with friends, I would get restless at night and have to go. Sometimes my friends went with me, and sometimes they stayed home and waited on me to come back. I even remember leaving a friend’s house before bedtime once when I found out her parents had an alarm system I wouldn’t be able to get past.
I’ve been thinking about why I had this almost compulsive need to be able to go. It wasn’t because I was doing things that could only be done at night, because most of the time I would just ride with some friends for a little while, or go sit at someone’s house, and then go back. The best explanation I can come up with at this time is that I needed to feel like I had some control over my life. I didn’t have much supervision at home, so I don’t know what it was about going out at night versus during the day that mattered, other than I knew that if I asked for permission, the answer would be no. Being able to go against that no, or bypass it, was what drove me. My insatiable need to go started settling some when I moved away from home.
As an adult, within the span of three years, I had three major life events take place. I got remarried, I lost my father, and my daughter moved out. While the marriage was a happy event, it was still a life change, and with all life changes, there is stress. The other two events introduced two different forms of grief, both of which I expected to happen at some point, but I learned quickly you can’t ever really plan for when things happen, and what grief can do. I found myself walking without destination, tears without expectation.
My mind and body were in a state of overwhelm, and I wanted to run. I planned my exit several times, and then realized I couldn’t run from myself because the things that were overwhelming me had nothing to do with my location, and everything to do with how I was feeling. This realization was not a happy one. My coping mechanism had been revealed in real time, with adult awareness.
I don’t feel the need to jump out of windows or sneak out at night anymore, but under the right conditions I will still try to make plans or imagine running away. The quiet crunch of sticks in grass, the crisp night air, crickets and other insects chirping- they call to me, but now I know to just sit with them instead of joining them.
