run from the world
Over and over again, I find myself reciting Han's Run, especially the bridge, a desperate mantra - Run from my room / Run from my town / Run from the city / Run from the world.
Sometimes I can't help but feel like everyone knows something about being a human being that I don't. Sometimes I study others and try to mimic the ease through which they exist. The pressure to succeed, the overwhelming fear of failing, the isolation and despair of facing the world. How do they do it? (You are right, Han. Sometimes all I want to do is run.)
You never intended to be in this world, I tell myself. But, all the same, you are in it. Why not try to live?
Because we cannot sit and stare at our wounds forever. I am learning this gradually, in the tiniest bits. The realization is brutal but cathartic. Sometimes we have to run, run as far as we can in the direction away from our worries and sufferings, and across the bridge we built, brick by brick, by our own desire to heal, to be free.
Again, I don't know how other people do it. I wonder if I was doomed for life, being born without the missing piece that everyone seemed to have, except me. I don't know what it is that makes me feel that way. It makes me rage.
Rage seems to be an emotion that I carry in my heart, in my entire body like a malignant disease. I sing it to sleep, but it roars. I feed it, but it tantrums. I soothe it, but it rages in return - tumultuous waves in a tumultuous ocean, monstrous, stubborn.
But perhaps this missing piece isn't a tangible object or an innate ability, but rather the courage to acknowledge the chaos of life. It’s in acknowledging the rage, fear, loneliness, and the relentless pursuit of solace as an element of being alive. Maybe this is how other people do it.
And maybe there will be no final destination when you run. Maybe this is life: the constant running, hoping for calmer waters. Maybe, just maybe, in sharing my vulnerabilities, you will find solace in the realization that you and I are together in this tumultuous sea.
After all, isn't that what it means to be human? To feel deeply, to struggle fiercely, yet to persevere?