As an adult, did you ever feel like running away?

The closest I ever get to “running away” is getting in my car and just driving around for a while. I find it easy to think when I’m driving.

I do feel like that from time to time, but I’m a coward I can’t do it :s

I think a lot of us have at least felt like it before. I have on a few occasions, but have never had to actually leave.

I’m one of those people who has the inability to say “no”. This often leaves me over-committed to the extreme. There are points where I just want to drop all of it, and run and hide. Unfortunately, I take my commitments seriously, and I can’t bring myself to do it.

When it gets really bad, though, I disconnect. (turn off my cell phone, stop checking my email) A few hours usually help.

Oh man, this could have been me writing this question. I feel like this with a lot more frequency lately. I have so much pressure from school, wife, and work that my head feels like it is going to crack. If I add to that my unsuccessful attempts (so far) at becoming published somehow, it just feels like too much. I cannot bring myself to go, because my oldest son’s face keeps popping into my head.

Keep in mind, as someone smarter than I said, “Wherever you go, you go also.”

All the time.

Every day! I said at Thanksgiving dinner that I want to get my own apartment—kind of kiddingly and kind of not and the looks I got… well, they were worth it. I just say what some people are thinking. I think everyone wants to get away from their life every once in a while.

Repeating myself; you can change locations but you take yourself there. There will be problems wherever you are. A better approach is to learn how to take care of yourself better and learn some conflict-resolution skills that don’t destroy your central nervous system.

I did for awhile not too long ago, but now I like where I am.

I only seriously thought about it once.

Almost exactly a year ago: My wife had been laid off for two years; we were out of money; just about to lose the house; my father had died in October after eighteen months of a vicious cancer; my mother was way off the deep end (volatile, unpredictable); all sorts of family drama; and I was working seven-days-a-week from Thanksgiving until New Year’s (70 hours-a-week).

I was this close to disapearing.

Luckily my better sense and love for my wife and daughter prevailed. Luckily.

@gailcalled: You are so right. Taking care of yourself is key. I’m slowly getting better at this.

Yes I have thought about it, never did it. I’m so glad to know that I am in all of your good company. : )

Often.

@J0E I find that driving helps to clear my head too

Yes, when watching George W. Bush on television. Or worse, Sarah Palin.

Yes. And I did actually follow through with it in a sense. I moved out. I was living with a boyfriend and we were having issues (due to me) and at some point I just didn’t know what to do anymore. I couldn’t fix myself while with him, so the next day I looked for an apartment to rent. Within a week I was moved out and living on my own for the first time in years. It was very scary but I needed it.

Yes, there was a time this summer that I’d have loved to just up & leave. To nowhere. With no one. Thankfully that feeling has passed. But it was very real for a while.

It’s a thought I entertain regularly – I like to think about where I would go, and whether I could change my name and assume a completely different identity. (when we were kids, my brothers and I were convinced that our father had a double life.) But, I wouldn’t leave without my partner. Maybe someday we will leave together. (Or I’ll change my Fluther name :p)

Yup.. I was 18 and decided I that I wanted to start over. I was living on my sisters couch and put some clothes in a backpack. I was getting survivors benefits at the time so I had some income.

One day I had enough of my ex, my sister, and everything else. So I silently packed what I could fit in my backpack and grabbed my skateboard and walked to the Greyhound station. I bought a ticket to San Diego.

When I got there I called to let my sister know what I had done. It would have taken her a week to notice. She was surprised but didn’t think anything of me being gone for so long.

Things did not go as planned. I couldn’t find an apartment and was staying in a really bad rent by the week motel. Eventually I found myself sitting on the beach with fifteen bucks in my pocket. I called my friend Bill who drove down from Eugene to pick up my stupid ass.

I did have a great time.

And after sleeping on Bill’s couch for a few months we got a house.

I feel like this a lot. I don’t particularly like Los Angeles (where I’ve been living for the past year) and being unemployed for some time has heightened my dislike of the city. Sometimes I entertain the notion of driving down the freeway, long past my exit, until I reach a new place to live.

Unfortunately, there’d be too much I’d miss.

“Wish I had a river I could skate away on,
wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly….”

(Joni Mitchell)

Yes!

I am a parent – I can not and will not run away…I have chosen to bring children into the world and therefore I must stay and raise them

a lot…and it is to get away from myself… this is why I crave sleep… I’d love to go to a remote island but like @gailcalled says(and I have this quote on my kitchen cupboard door…) ”At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from…” Emerson

Yes, I think about it all the time. I drive around down my street and think in my head how, if I only had a passport, I would be in England tomorrow.

Years ago when my kids were smalland we had no money because my husband was drinking it away. I’d be driving south on a road and think I should just keep going until I hit mexico. But of course, I turned left and went home.

When I was little, I always thought I would! Haha, didn’t happen. Every once in a while I would still like to just leave everything. But. Then I think about what drives me, personally. Accountability is what keeps me going. The sense that I am needed by those around me. And it is because of that accountability, I don’t actually plan on running away.

I did it twice. Both times were after I went on vacation, and then wanted to return and “live” the vacation.

I was only 12 the first time, and took a bus from Denver to Albuquerque to live with my Aunt and Uncle. It turned out they expected far more ‘help’ from us kids than my own parents did.

We visited California when I was 15 and I wanted to live there from then on. When I was 24 I finally got the chance. My husband and I took our tax refund, bought a used car and drove to California. We had no idea what we were in for – high prices, no jobs. We lived as hippies for a few years.

@janbb: One of my all time favorite songs. I play it every Christmas and bawl like a baby.

In 1990, I lived in the East County of San Diego, a blue collar area in some parts, including mine. I noticed that almost all my local friends were irresponsible. They barely fed their pets much less their babies. They had no values, no spirit, and lived irresponsible lives based on life drama, local events, and the consumption of alcohol. I quit my job there, dumped every single local friend for good, moved to the Beach without saying a word to any of them, and lived in my Camper while starting over. I then had the best 5 years of my life, met caring people for friends, and a developed a more or less solid footing from that point on. I also predicted the school shooting that occurred there at Santana High before it happened. The politically-conservative and emotionally distant, but careless blue-collar neighborhood, with 3 gun shops and a populace of non-intelligent people, was a timebomb for such a thing. None of these factors alone causes a school shooting, but they sure all add up

Did you ever feel like running away? Frequently.

What made you feel that way? I have a bipolar son, a disabled husband, a teen-aged daughter, and now my elderly parents are moving to town so I can look after them. Do you really have to ask?

Did you actually run away? Where did you go? Did you stay away? The closest I have ever come to running away is picking up a good book, and going outside to the screened porch to read until folks figured out I was out there.

I am getting better at coping, though. Yesterday my son refused to take his meds and as a consequence had several melt-downs, did everything at extreme high speed, and continually issued negative comments about me, even during the movie we went to see. I just turned away and did whatever it was I needed to do, and then proceeded to enjoy the movie by ignoring him totally.

It worked for me. And it may have worked for him – he took his meds without comment today.

@daloon I missed the “adult” part. Does this count? Two weeks after I met my current husband, I quit my job, sold everything I had, and my son and I moved in with him and a group of other people in a house on the beach. We lived on food stamps and bartering for a couple of years, while he finished school.

@Darwin Maybe you are eligible for respite care?

@YARNLADY If I pay for it. It isn’t covered any other way.

Every now and then, I look at the checking account to see how much cash is in there, and then call Greyhound to see how far it will take me. Then I get out the map, examine my choices, and google them to see if they sound interesting. Then I take a deep breath, and deal with whatever needs dealing with.

Almost daily.

All the time. Just get in my car and drive.. having withdrawn all the cash out of my account.. no intent on living the same life again.. a drifter.. an adventurer… of course .. eventually a bum who dies on the beach in san diego .. homeless and all adventured out..

Well how do you think I ended up in Australia???

No actually when I came here, I was running to something not away from anything.

In AA running away is called a “geographic cure” and as @gailcalled said, it doesn’t work because all your demons run with you. Like Jon what’s his name says, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Funny you should ask….

I want to do it today..right now. (I’m not kidding.)

Do you know the myth of Inanna? She went into the underworld and was dismembered and hung on a meat hook? Or Persephone who was kidnaped by Hades?

That’s been my life for the past few years….in a Jungian sense. I thought I was healed totally of any sort of heebie-jeebies from childhood….having been therapized, and counselled, and Rolfed and acupunctured and rebirthed and everything else. I thought I was totally cleared…..to get on with my new adventure in life.

But instead, I was faced with an even greater painful initiation…...and that’s what I am dealing with now.

I’ll just leave it at that.

Yeah….I want to run away….and spend hours thinking about it…but how would I get there? But more than that? Where on earth would I go?

@DarlingRhadamanthus I, in fact, do know of that myth…how weird…I just re-read Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” and the myth is mentioned in the book…and now you mention it…so random how sometimes you dont hear about something for years and then an ancient myth creeps up into your life twice in one week…maybe it’s a sign

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – Maybe you should avoid butcher shops for a bit.

@Darwin easy, I don’t eat red meat

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – I wasn’t thinking of the eating part, more the “hanging around” or “getting hooked” part.

@Darwin I see…sorry, I am at work, all serious-like

right have to tell you all this…

I’ve been afraid and worried about driving to the hospital in Manchester today (because I didn’t know where it was and all sorts of fears about getting lost and what not…) but before I went I did tried to open myself up to the creative possibilities that the journey might offer me…even if that was shrouded in getting lost, or having a car crash… I was completely open to all the possibilities, trusting that what would happen would be right

…then as I was driving along, rather than being fearful I remembered how I used to love travelling as a kid…we used to drive three hours to see my grandma regularly… the drive along the motorway always used to fill me with wonder and give me a sense of escaping and pretending that I was running far away from my problems…. more importantly being taken far away from my problems… as I remembered this feeling, the feeling came back to me and rather than feeling scared I suddenly felt part of the world again…my world…unafraid…

Mentally I have been running away from the very thing that I needed to experience (driving) in order to run away and escape the chains of my fear… So I didn’t literally run away but the act of doing that helped me free myself a little…

did that make any sense??? it sounded much better as a conceptual idea in my head…

@lynneblundell Made wonderful sense to me, Lynn.

If I had enough money, I’d run away in the morning. I want to run so badly

I did it once. 1989. I had a stressful situation coming up at work, and decided to just drive past, and keep on driving. Well, it backfired. My boss called my wife to see where I was. My wife tracked my gas purchases on our bankcard, and fearing the worst, called the bank and shut the card down. I was going to turn around and come back home for dinner, but ran out of gas, no money for a phone call, 100 miles away from home.

oh… @Yetanotheruser reminded me of the time when I ran out of my job… I was working at the local Co-operative Store and the manager wanted me to do something I’d never done before and hadn’t got a clue how to do…work the Deli counter… and it terrified me… I was going through a dificult time and simply couldn’t do it… so rather than address the issue in any shape or form… I got my things in the middle of my shift and ran out the back door… it felt great! needless to say I didn’t go back!

…which reminds me of a job interview I was on to be a stringer for a local newspaper. I attended a meeting and was to go back to the newspaper to write it up. They sat me down at a machine and told me to word process it. This was in a long ago time before word proccesing machines were commonplace and when local newspapers still existed. I told them I had a migraine and left, again never to return.

Some times i feal like leaving from everything my kids my wife because it so hard for me to be the head of the house with my job been the store manager and steel been a husband and a dad.Some times i would like to walk away or drive and not care about me or others just to leave in a whole and not do nothing its very hard for me especialy when my kids are like little taz manian devils i clean then they make a mess and my wife when she dont understand what im going to i can’t even spend time alone just to think about life and how am i going to make a better futre for my family when i hear the phone ring and my wife asking me when am i going to get home.That an every day thing and working 12 hours a day plus one day working from 6am to 10pm and only one day off why? I ask my self that question everyday well my answer is my family and the economy there no work that i cout win to pay my bills and still have time for my family.I ask my self why is there familys that dont work and geth food stamps and welfare and unemploement and a still have a nice car and spen time with there familys do i need to do the same i just dont geth it.Some one please answer my question.

@cam72z28 May I suggest you go on one of the ‘parent’ forums and discuss this with other parents who are feeling just as frustrated as you are?

I typed into my browser, “I am an adult and I want to run away” and this site came up. I have to admit tho, I am rather picky about where I would go, but yet, where ever it is, I just want it to end up being a place with no worry, no fuss, and nobody making demands on me, no husband acting like a whiney baby and finding any number of silly things to get mad at me over, no more worries about my teenage son telling me it’s ok to smoke pot, lie, tell me off…only to call a few hours later and ask for stuff, and not stress…is the cancer going to come back and when? If I run away, I want to sit back in a low lying cabana chair, sip a fancy drink with a piece of fruit and a paper parasol in it, read a book, perhaps get up now and then and go for a walk and feel my long skirt flutter in the warm breeze about my bare legs. For some it’s a vacation, for me, it would just have it be permanent. I often fantasize about being marooned on a beautiful tropical island, that just happens to have water and a way to gather food. There’s no one to call me, no one to let me know what I have forgotten to do for them, no one to blame me for their wretched existence.
I typed these words into my browser not because I hate my life or consider myself terribly unhappy, It’s just at times I feel overwhelmed. I remarried, and made a bad choice. He was wonderful until a week after when I realized I let myself be decieved. I live with guilt over it because of my kids, anger at myself for being so stupid, and knowing I should leave, but then again, I was here first, and fear. Fear about money to live on, starting over and losing my home and property in a divorce. I have stayed because he is terribly unhealthy and hasn’t got much longer to live anyway. (I type this in a very dispassionate way.)
So packing up and disappearing…a great fantasy. Trouble is fantasy does not equal reality.

Welcome to Fluther @karen2 .
Perhaps you could run away with the rest of us to right here on this website.
As you can see many of us would like to run away at time. I hope things get better for you very soon.

@karen2 Fantasy does not equal reality, but it does provide a goal. Maybe you won’t end up living on your beach (although who knows—you could), but there are other things in your life that you could fix, one at at time.

If you want any of the collective’s wisdom about any of those goals, please ask how to accomplish them. I bet you’ll find several good ideas.

Lately the feeling is intense. I have been there there done that, grown children, beautiful grand children, great career but hate my job stress. Now , in school and close to new career which is keeping me here, note I am a grown woman who has barely been anywhere . Have become “mother” again. Boyfriend , daughter in law will wait for me to wait on them (don’t ask how I got mixed up with the DIL it’s unbelievable) but want to run and not look back. Think I’ll wait till Summer of 2012, sounds like a book right? Yep, thats it, maybe a beach house alone for a month or how about we all plan a meeting place! The tension release and free spirited fun is a great fantasy that I would like to make happen at least for a vacation! Who’s game?

for the past 10 years…all i have wanted to do is just walk away…i’m not a kid and i am not married…i rent a room. i have no responsibilities. i have a job that barely pays for the car i bought so i could get to the job. it doesn’t make sense to me…i’ve wasted my meager life sleeping and working. i have never given my self the chance to experience…life. yes i fell in love with romantic ‘tramp’ way of life…i do understand the negatives of the same life…robberies and beatings (or worse) to people that choose to start life as a “free spirit”. the pro’s are outnumbering the con’s that i can think of.