Alice & her Madness (2)

Sometimes I get the urge to run away. Change my name. Reinvent my entire self. Become a different person who lives a completely different life. Sometimes I get the urge to burn my past in a fire and throw the now in with it too. It’s nothing personal against anyone except myself. My mind puts me down daily and I’d give anything to get away forever. A permanent vacation with purpose. I need to breathe. I need to feel more than what I have been feeling for the last 20 something years in the same damn place. I am grateful for everything I’ve been given up until this point in my life. All the blessings. All the help. I will always be thankful. But I’m so done. I want out of this “it’s a wonderful life” type of shit. I don’t want to grow up in my home town. I don’t want to say that I raised my kids in the same house I grew up in. There are too many memories here. Too many good times. Too many sad times. And I’ve saged this house like you wouldn’t believe. I have healing stones, candles, beautiful indoor plants. I rearrange the house. I make it look different than it did when I was a kid but the memories seep through like toxic mold and I am suffocating. I love my home town, I do…don’t get me wrong. I really have no complaints. I am at peace with what once was. The good times do out weight the bad. I do find myself smiling as I drive down the same roads I drove down as a ridiculous, crazy 16 year old with my best friends once upon a time. I miss those days. But not enough to go back. I would rather not relive. I just want to remember and move on. How badly I want out of my home town. Out of this house. If I could pack all the things I truly need into one bag and walk out that front door and never come back, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’ve done it once, left without even giving a thought or proper good bye. I could do it again. And this time I wouldn’t feel as bad because I wouldn’t be leaving anything behind. There is seriously nothing left for me here yet I still keep hanging on. I have no more friends here. My family is in two different states. I have my fiance and the rest of the people that matter to me live far away. Some only 30 mins. Some over an hour. When I was younger, everyone lived in my home town. All of my friends were 5 mins down the road or even walking distance. We all went to the same places…the same stores, the same restaurants. You ran into friends back then. That is what I miss about this place. The people. Everyone has gone on to live their new lives and I’m still here. Still. Here. In the same house I lived in since I was 7 years old. I’ve experienced some of the most awful shit inside of this house. And some of my memories are so good I can’t help but literally laugh and smile out loud because those times really made me happy…whether the memories include my parents, my friends, my grandma, my dogs….I will never forget those times. But I cannot wait to never come back. Once I leave, I hope I never drive through this stupid zig-zaggy neighborhood ever again. I don’t want to go to these shops, these restaurants, ever. again. I know I sound dramatic but I’ve gone crazy here. Multiple times. I have had enough of being surrounded by my entire existence. The amount of times I will be driving to the grocery store and think about that time I drove down that same road crying my eyes out in the middle of the night because I was terrified to go home. That’s when I began hating this house….when my parents left and my bf at the time moved in and then we got engaged and married and then he got strung out on heroin and the mental abuse was too much and I lost it. I fucking lost it in this house and in my home town. I have driven erratically down these same roads more than I can count. Driving in the same car. Screaming. Crying. Hating my life. Cursing my life. I don’t want to drive down these roads anymore. Those flashbacks don’t haunt me as much as the years go on but they linger and I can’t stand how they linger. I won’t be able to escape until I really do just that…

I want to escape this place, once and for all. I’m afraid what this place might do to me if I stay much longer. I do what I can to stay patient and I know all good things take time. Eventually, I will move and be out of there and I will never look back and I can’t wait until that day. I can’t wait until the day I pack every last thing and look at the empty walls and the empty floors and feel the hollow atmosphere…the air will feel heavy. I’m sure I will feel sad and I’m sure my sobs will echo throughout the rooms because there will no longer be anything absorbing the sounds of my cries. There will be nothing left in this house…finally. And I will leave it with hope that another family will make better, healthier memories with their family behind those closed doors.

Being stuck in my hometown is my own damn fault. Being stuck in my own head is my own damn fault. Being stuck in this house…my fault. Living the same life with different people, different scenarios….I’m tired of it. Give me a new life with a new home and new roads to drive down in the middle of the night when I’m feeling happy and free and laughing my ass off with my best friend by my side. Give me back roads and plenty of trees and beautiful scenary that will always pull me back from any kind of negative feeling. Give me more nature. My home town is no longer small. It is city life. I hate city life. Get me out of the city please. Give me new. I want new. I want to learn something new. I’m so tired of believing that life is only this…my hometown and everything that revolves around it. It isn’t true. There is so much more out there. It is my own damn fault for not finding it sooner. But it’s never too late to start over and I cannot wait to start over.

If I could change my name, I would. It’s nothing personal. I love my name because it is mine and it reminds me of my family and I love my family. I don’t want to abandon my name. Just call me something different. I want to look different. I want to act different which really means I want to simply be myself and no longer be afraid. I want to go where no one knows me and no one knows my past. No one can judge me for what use to be….because all they know is what I am now. I want to forget my past and I promise myself that I will. But I must revisit for the sake of my purpose. I have to write.

Maybe living in my home town for as long as I have is a blessing. All that has happened here is going to fuel my journey towards the destiny I long to embrace. Everything I’ve experienced since I was 7 years old mixed with all my thoughts and dreams and wishes…all of it lives inside of me…fueling the woman I’m becoming…the writer I am destined to be. ….so maybe one day I’ll need to actually thank this house and hometown instead of saying how much I despies it.

Alice A.H.

You reap what you sow.