Benefits and consequences of short term absconding

[Loca_SHJ]

Hi,

I was hoping i could find someone on here with personal experiences in running away from their lives so i can pick their brain in terms of what they gained and lost from the experience. Someone that has for a short period of time driven off from their life without a holiday/vacation plan but with the primary intention to stop being everything they feel they have to be for the people around them and to just exist for themselves.

I have been wanting to do this since I was 15 (perhaps earlier). I'm now a few days from being 24 but I haven't lived a day away from family, friends or other person that put a requirement on me to be a particular way. I have been going through intensive therapy including schema therapy so i'm aware that the reason for this intense and decade long persistance to run away from my life is because of my subjugation schema leaving me feeling choked and controlled by other peoples requirements on me. Through therapy I understand those feelings may not be founded in reality 100% of the time.

But i still can't shake the feeling this is something I have to do for myself and that I can't be happy without having experienced it. For the last decade I told myself the reason i didn't go was because i couldn't afford to. I have since been working and have enough money saved up to comfortably be able to leave my life for a few months without financial hardship (I will likely only go a few weeks). I also work casually which means I can leave without being a huge burden on my employer. There has never been and may likes never be a more convenient time to run from my life than now. And yet I am so afraid of the impact this act will have on the same people that make me feel suffocated. I know it will be huge because these people never let me stay overnight anywhere, get angry and disappointed in me if I am more than half an hr late in getting home and rarely ever let me be out after 10pm.

I want a chance to stop being a daughter, sister, friend, mother, employee, law grad, legal assistant, student and instead to just be me. I want two weeks in my life where I can exist because I want to and not because all these people need me to do something or be someone specific. I wan't to feel like I own my life for once. But perhaps I am idealising this and in the end it will turn into a horrible disappointment where i shatter my own dream and hurt other people too.

I don't know what to do.

What did you gained or lost from your experience?

Sam

[White_Rose]

Hello Sam

I hope I did not throw cold water on your escape plan by reminding you about taking your past with you. I see it as a good idea to state your independence and demonstrating you can manage on your own. Thinking about my life I wonder if leaving my husband was also a demonstration of my independence, though no doubt my reasons are different to yours. Taking your past with you is unavoidable but there may be good memories which go with you as well as the restricting memories.

At the very least you will find a reassurance of your own abilities and strengths and that can only be good. If you have led a very restricted life with lots of safeguards around you it may take more than a few weeks to show yourself how well you can function. I think there will be three stages. The initial euphoria of escape and the freedom to choose. The second is the realisation you are on your own and any decision has consequences, some which you may not like or make you feel a little unsafe. The third stage is the realisation that you can indeed look after yourself and that is fantastic.

These three parts will probably come and go as circumstances change. Keep in mind the first two will give way to the mature and capable you. Remember that when you encounter difficulties, as we all do, and keep exploring. I wish you good fortune in your travels.

Mary

[White_Rose]

Whoops, I meant to direct you to another thread. In Staying Well/Words of comfort, encouragement and wisdom/ Birdy77.

I posted a poem in there which I think may resonate with you. It's called Trough. Hope it has meaning for you.

Mary

[Juliet_84]

Hi Loca,

The weight of other people’s expectations, real or perceived, can be crushing and anxiety-producing for sure. And I think most of us experience the desire to run away from everything we know at one point or another. Is there any way that you can abscond overseas, but frame it as a holiday, so that way you leave the door open if you don’t like it? Also, that will stop the inevitable reaction of people to put more pressure on you which is the last think you probably want. Or just tell them you’ve gone overseas and switch off your phone lol

[Loca_SHJ]

Hi All,

Thank for your responses. I just wanted to let you know that i did get away for a bit but I'm back now.

Mary i think you were right with the three stages (although i don't think i made it through them all completely). I'm trying to apply my newfound faith in myself into negotiating a change in the controlling situation but so far its gotten really messy. My mother can be a very toxic women when she doesn't get her way so I'm finding that has become very hard to live with. Though I'm trying not to revert to how i was before the escape and let everyone push me around. Its an uphill battle at the moment.

Hi Juliet. I did frame it as a get away so that was helpful. And i always intended to come back. If nothing else i feel a little more comfortable now in accepting that I can never make anyone else happy. They have to be responsible for their own happiness. So in sacrificing my own well-being to please them in the end satisfies nobody.

Its a long road ahead for me because nobody likes it when a "Yes girl" suddenly starts saying "no". It means they can no longer get their way all the time. It means she's thinking for herself and thats scary for people that have grown dependent on her not thinking but just doing.

Smeetha