Life has a way of being silly. Given the plot twists and turns since my 30th birthday, I'm not sure that I can say much with conviction in regards to life plans aside from this: expect silliness.
For years I have been trying to leave. I would say that it started when I got my passport as a junior in high school and traveled to Peru, but that is just when my ability to travel grew to an international scale. The truth is, I was the kid who would irrationally pack up my few prized possessions and flee home for the smelly bit of woods near the sewage stream, the shelter of trees behind the neighbor's wooden fence, or the hallowed out stump/cabin near our neighborhood playground. A brother or two would always follow me on bike, disclose my new secret home to the parents, and convey messages from my mother that if I didn't get home in time for dinner, I would be grounded. The logic of this doesn't make sense, come home now or be grounded, but neither did my new life as a gutter renegade. For instance, I had no plan on how to get water when my thermos ran dry or where to get food when that package of saltines was fully consumed. I always returned home and just in time for dinner.
As I got older, the home leaving schemes grew larger. At 15, I learned of a fellow 15-year old who started teaching in villages in Africa. I almost badgered the news sharing missionary into telling me exactly how this could be arranged before realizing that my parents valued education and would never support a scheme that didn't have me finishing high school. At 17, my boyfriend introduced me to the idea of crewing for a rich person's yacht, traveling the world and serving various forms of alcohol and food to the 1% while they were around, and enjoying port and boat while they were not. I nearly married the chap for his perceived connections within this high-brow boating community, knowing exactly which states allowed underaged marriage without parental consent, before my puritan fear of sex scared me into acting otherwise. Thank goodness for my parents and that fear.
At 18, I finally made good on one of my plans. In February, I accepted a nanny job in Scotland, set up independent studies for the classes I still needed to graduate, withdrew from high school, bought a one way ticket to Scotland using funds borrowed from the aforementioned boyfriend, and boarded a plane for Edinburgh foot loose and fancy free. What I didn't see while leaving were the worried and teared up faces of my parents, the devastated look of my childhood friend upon learning that we may not be walking together at graduation, or the general confusion and hurt from countless mentors, teachers and adults in my life that wondered what in the world was going on with me. It took me about a week of performing nanny duties inadequately, experiencing British aristocracy as the serving class, and communicating home (infrequently but enough to realize that life does go on without you) before I finally realized what it really means to run away.
Or, looking back now, I wish I had learned what it meant to run away. Instead, when things started going badly with my job, when I started feeling homesick and nauseated at the opportunities and friends I'd left behind, when aforementioned boyfriend didn't in fact wait for me and I had no friends with enough history and investment to help me through the heartbreak, I ran away again. This time, from the home of the family where I was working and into the home of my adopted Scottish grandparents until my parents helped me buy a plane ticket home.
My adventure in Scotland consisted of 4 months of employment and 2 weeks of recovery before arriving at the Seatac airport, just in time for prom and graduation. While I learned important lessons about myself and the world on that trip, my desire to leave stayed strong. Thanks to my parents, I'd made it home in time for dinner, experiencing few consequences and never really learning what happened when the thermos dried up or the saltine crackers package was empty.
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