Is This What You Wanted?

October is my favorite month, Autumn my favorite season, and tomorrow I'm running away as far and for as long as I can (which isn't much on either counts.) I'm going away from a mundane office job with hypocritical supervisors; away from rejection, from loneliness in the midst of crowds, from people in arrested development & adult cliques; away from the frustration of being stuck and struggling to break free. I'm driving alone to Wisconsin to my older brother's sprawling house on sprawling acreage with giant trees and miles and miles of open space; to a place with people who know me, who understand my way, people I grew up with, who aren't trying to be anyone they're not. People who are just as relieved to be around someone equally comfortable with them. I'm going to shoot the homemade bow & arrows my brother made for his wife & girls, climb in the treehouse with my niece, and go out in my socks to throw balls for their dog in the chilly morning. I even told my brother he could wait to go to an antique salvage yard, so I could tag along.

I like to tag along with my big brother. I like to wear sneakers & jeans & hoodies b/c no one cares, and do whatever I like without feeling like I have to do something socially acceptable in someone's house, b/c I'M acceptable, and no one cares. Because these are people who grow & pick their own apples, and then spend a week making all sorts of homemade apple stuffs, including cider. Who make beer & wine, and renovate their entire house on their own, and have careers they love & creativity left over, and go out bike riding with their kids, and have shelves and shelves of books in every room, and have cabinets with drawers that say "interesting things," "useful things," & "neither." And quite honestly, I am lost without those people, b/c they are who I always knew I was, and who I always wanted to be. Not alone, going through motions, trying to find a chance, waiting to find someone else similar to me. I told my mom recently that I just wanted to be around the kind of people I grew up with, and she said that gave her hope that maybe I would give up chasing windmills. What else is there to chase when you have never yet been able to catch up with what you've always needed? When your timing has always been a little off?

Every kind of freedom has its own bonds. And while I'm as free now as I've ever been, while I can do anything I want to do without being told I can't... there is a certain sadness always present. A sadness I think too many people know all too well. So I head down the open road again, trying to find a peace away from these confines; to feel accepted & included; to feed the restlessness inside me for a few months longer, until I finally find a change to suit me.