It has been one of those weeks where I wish I could just run away and get a fresh start with my life. I remember feeling this way when I first got divorced. I wanted to run far, far away. I didn’t want anything to remind me of my past. Just driving around, I would pass this place or that and I would feel the sting of everything again. I wanted to somehow erase everything from my mind, run from the pain, and just get away from everything.
I wanted nothing more than to be in a place where I could start all over, where nobody knows my story. Sometimes I think about running off to the coast somewhere, to really find myself all over again. I fantasize about it a little more than I should most days. Of course the reality of the situation is that I’m stuck here because of my son. It would be hard to take him away from his father. I know that in some cases people are able to make that kind of a situation work and if it came down to it maybe we could, but I think I would feel guilty for taking him away from his dad. Trying to figure out parent time would be complicated and the whole situation would be difficult for everyone involved. He would miss the people he’s grown to love and truth be told I would too.
I think it is normal to want to get away from everything. Sometimes having those reminders all around us that life isn’t quite what we thought it would be can bring back the pain that so often we think we have already dealt with. Even the littlest things will trigger an old memory and bam! I’m right back in that place all over again and it takes everything inside me not to fall apart.
So while I can’t run away from home, I can make the best of the situation. It’s time to start replacing the old memories with new ones. My son and I are now on a mission to recreate those places in our lives. It’s not quite the fresh start I had in mind, but it’s pretty dang close.