Roadrunner

I always called myself a runner.

One who decides that handling the mere thought of emotion would be more devastating than uprooting my life and entirely changing who I was. I embraced change. I handle change. I’m good at change. Emotion? Fear? Insecurity? That, I do not do.

I have been attempting to delve into just what it is that brought me to this point in my life. When did it begin? Why do I do it? Where did it come from? These are the things that keep me up at night.

Let me list this off for you in a “story point form” setting.

I have always moved a lot. A trait learnt early on from my family. Moving around the island and lower mainland. Summers and winters out of province. Little stability, no time to make friends. Do you still remember your first best friend’s name? Because I do not. Do you get dreams about your childhood home, or still get to visit it when you go to your parents? I am not certain what a childhood home is. I mean, we have a home we lived in for 7 years. Does that count?

I have rarely witnessed long-term relationships as a positive thing, or even a possibility. My mother is a beautiful human, but she, as I do, left when it no longer worked for her. Perhaps, I took it a little farther and decided to leave before it even began after awhile. Evidently proving my inevitable ability to pursue relationships that required work.

My father, as much as he wanted to be there, was not. He taught me that it was okay to be distant, that it was possible to refrain from social needs and human interaction because people would always be in our lives. He taught me that I did not need to try that hard, because even when he didn’t, I always wanted to have a part of my life with him in it.

Jobs, relationships, homes, animals, friendships. These were all things that were transferrable and typically guaranteed to build or redevelop upon time. Changing these things did not matter, stability did not matter. I learnt early and quickly to adapt to my surroundings and live comfortably, over-sharing too quickly with humans I’d met to build friendships as fast as possible before my next move. Acquaintances were the ones I perceived as friends, and best friends were merely the ones I’d stay in contact with through my moves. Family? Well, I’ve been taught that family is replaceable. I don’t mean that in the way that you may view it. The people I develop relationships with are people I hold, and will forever have blood with, well deep into my veins. Family is a matter of mindset. Your mother will never change, your father will never change. But you can have plenty of versions of them, the same way that you can have plenty of versions of friends.

That’s why it is so easy to run. What else do you stay in one place for? Where would you go if you knew that you could build family in any city that you chose to reside in? What lengths would you go to to solve an ever-growing conflict if you knew that you could just leave and find new happiness?

Ultimately, I look at what I have learnt. I look at other people’s lives. Sometimes I think that I crave the traditional white picket fence family. I want that closeness, that comfort, that love. But I also know that I have learnt to love each individual as though they are just that for me. What takes time though is the undeniable fear that every other person is just as I view them; replaceable. Because we are all too used to the interchangeability of humans these days, we begin to fear just that exact pleasure that we too easily take part in.

And maybe that makes me weird. Perhaps that causes me to be the kind of person that acts too quickly, loves too deeply, or walks away too fast. I am working on learning how to work through my difficulties, I am learning to speak my mind and not fear that someone is willing to just walk away. It’s something I have never dreamt of understanding in my entirety of life.

But it’s a work in progress. Like everything else in this world is.