The Runaways

My family is my home, and home is my saving grace.

Not a place for me stay, it’s a place for me to COME BACK to.

Clearly it’s quite different from being a castaway, as I’m not being rejected. Instead, I’m the one deciding to reject...to seek new possibilities.

Instead I am the runaway, first.

I remember how back in the 2nd/3rd grade we got to write short stories that were then bound into spiffy, grown-up-looking miniature books. I wrote books with whimsical titles like “Her Unicorn” and “Momma Mia, Poppa Pia!”

But my ultimate favorite was titled “The Runaways.”

Even having since left childhood, the appeal of such an idea has stayed with me. It’s the seed that spawns my incurable restlessness and my keen yearning to experience absolutely everything at once!…my bursting ambition to have it all, just so I know (and can choose for myself) what I don’t need or want.

And for all the words in the world, I can’t explain it.

Especially when I’m on the verge of realizing what I’ve been running away, running towards all my life thus far. I know it, I think I see it, and yet I have no idea what the It actually is!

It’s the fleeting epiphany that haunts me.

A sweet sound of the last breath.

This time last year I finally started admitting to people that I was applying for med school. Though only when I was specifically asked as I never offered that information first. And with each time I uttered the words “pre-med,” the surer I became that it was exactly opposite of what I wanted.

Oh, but I kept saying it still.

Each time growing ever more dissatisfied with myself.

So, this time last year, I started leading a double-life of sorts.

It seemed to others I was pursuing one thing when really I was doing all I could to run in the other direction. Taking the MCATs barely broke a sweat for me because I didn’t care enough to stress. I was fine with my average score (hell, even my writing scored the letter right smack dab in the middle) because my life didn’t depend on it.

It wasn’t the life I wanted anyhow.

Call it the very best-kept of all my secrets from year 2006.

Or so I thought.

This time this year, my mom casually said at the dinner table:

“The thing you wanted to tell us this weekend, is it that you don’t want to go to med. school?”

My dad and little sister jerked up their heads.

I took a deep breath, or two.

My parents' words of 'whatever you want to do, we will support your decision as long as it's your passion' was being put to the test. I know of their unconditional support, but I feared the crushing possibility of their disapproval, of disappointment.

“Yes.”

Letting go of the breath I was holding, I was finally able to take my first...

“Okay. What're you going to do instead?”

...breath of utter relief.

At those words and to the surprise of everyone at the dinner table (including myself), I proceeded to cry puddles into my plate of half-eaten food. Not the pretty kind, mind you. But the unstoppable kind where my nose turns red and my cheeks get all blotchy, where I’m sniffling and hiccuping at alternating intervals…

The kind only my family and a few, close friends have seen.

You see, The Runaway would’ve run away following her heart regardless, but damn! running away is SO MUCH BETTER with the ones you love and respect the most.

It's so much lighter.