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I’m damn good at running away. I’m probably better at it than anything else I’ve ever tried. And, as you can imagine, this can create a lot of problems for me; quitting becomes easier, there’s always such a mess to clean up after one returns to the place they’ve tried to abandon, financial destructiveness, etc. Sometimes, running away is a good idea, however. Sometimes, running away is the best idea I’ve ever had. Not very long ago, I ran away to Dallas.  Here’s what that looked like.

On an August night, I found myself lying in bed at 1 AM unable to sleep, which gives me immense anxiety. I have insomnia. It’s annoying. But on this particular night, it was unbearable, because it was indicative of everything I was experiencing in my train wreck of a life. So, being an escapist like myself, I begin to imagine how great it would be to be somewhere not lying in bed at 1AM unable to sleep. I imagined the beach, or Paris, or the Andes.

What occurred to me, was how depressing it felt to be trapped; shackled by routines, burdened by the abstract expectations that loomed over me, telling me that I should be more normal.

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What’s the point of life? No, seriously. What’s the end goal? Because, in my twenty-one years of existence, I have yet to come to many reasonable conclusions. Now would be the appropriate time to disclose that I am not religious, although quite frankly, I wish I was. I’ve made a valiant effort to believe in a God, go to church, pray before dinner. But due to the unfavorable nature of my existence, I have never be able to really accept the answers that religion has to offer. So I won’t discuss religion from this point on: this is purely an existential debacle I’m trying to smooth out here.

Apparently, this is a viable option to said toothpaste dilemma.

Let me tell you what life is like. You wake up at a time that feels unpleasing to your circadian rhythm. Because this is not your natural sleep cycle, you must check for minuscule events that might have happened on Facebook or Huffington Post while you were asleep, which is really just an effort to wake yourself up with the bright screen of your phone. Groggy and tired, you walk into the bathroom, and go pee (admittedly, one of the only enjoyable events of the morning), and then you set out to make yourself look mildly presentable. You grab the toothpaste, and spend at least 90 seconds trying to get the fresh, less crusty toothpaste past the hardened barricade at the opening of the tube. Annoying! You try to get that glob of stale toothpaste off and into the trashcan, but you use toilet paper, because it’s so gross to touch that sh*t. Well, the toilet paper is clearly not made for this kind of work, so now you have stale toothpaste AND little pieces of toilet paper at the end of you toothpaste bottle. Forget that, let’s go on to something else. Breakfast: the battle of willpower and masochism. Your options are slim. Do you cook something that’s only mildly enjoyable, like an egg and cheese english muffin, or sit in self-hatred as you eat something that’s quick, yet filled with poison like a toaster strudel? You can’t even enjoy those poison-laced pastries, because you can feel them rotting you from the inside out.