Cut a Vital Connection

Sometimes I fantasize about running away. One morning, I will get up, pack my car and drive off to somewhere else, maybe Oregon. At first, people won’t realize I’m gone. Then, after a couple of days, they will start to ask questions. But, by then it’ll be too late. My cell phone and email will have been discontinued, and there will be no way for anyone to get into contact with me. That’s all. One day, they will wake up and I will be gone.

I find this daydream funny for a number of reasons. First of all, I care more about the reaction people will have to my absence, then the new life that I will be leading in a far off city. Knowing that, I have come to understand, that it is not being absent from people that I dream about. The kernel of gratification that I would reap from this disappearance would be lost because, after all, I would not be around to experience the reactions.

Knowing this, I dig deeper. Is it the desire to feel needed: to know that I will be missed? Why do I have to go to such an extreme to feel desired?

More to the point though, why am I afraid of people knowing me?

I think of interpersonal relationships as being vital because other people remind me of who I really am. I can spend hours, days even, in a fantasy land, spinning off into the stratosphere. But, each time, I get pulled back to reality be someone or someone else. My friends and family are my grounding points, and without them, I would be able to live in the blissful ignorance of my own imagination. They remind me of my human folly: the desire to be loved, the mistakes that I make. The people that populate my life remind me that I am human.