Running Away

When I was sixteen, I ran away from home. It wasn't the first time. I think that was when I was about six. That time I left with my cousin who was four years older. We went about a mile and hung out at a drug store, and we got in a lot of trouble when my parents and aunt and uncle found us. I'm sure she got in more trouble since she was older. The next time I was a bit more purposeful. I was ten that time, and put a few belongings in a bandana that I tied to the end of a stick. (I watched a lot of old movies when I was a kid.) I walked about five miles down the road -- a major road in a DC suburb -- and got tired. I wasn't sure at that point what I should do; I had planned to the extent that I brought a few things with me, but not enough to figure out exactly where I was going. Five miles is far for a little kid! It may have been more than that. I ended up calling my father at work and telling him I was at a gas station and the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and Colesville Road. He came and picked me up, without giving me too much of a hard time, and took me back home. I don't think my mother even knew I'd gone anywhere. And that was the biggest lesson I learned each of these times: It's really easy to leave, to just walk out the door and be gone. It's a lesson that has helped me (and hurt me) at other points in my life.

But back to when I was sixteen. That time I was serious. I was headed to Colorado, but what I thought I'd do when I got there escapes me now. I might have known then and forgotten now, or I may have not quite honed my leaving skills yet. Somehow, incredibly, I managed to talk my school bus driver into dropping me off at the end of my best friend's street. I said that her mom was giving us both a ride. Can you imagine the fallout from such a thing now?! But the bus driver did it, and my friend was at home with cramps. (She had such bad menstrual cramps she took Darvon for them and usually missed at least one day of school every month.) I hung out, and I don't remember if her mom came home early from work or she just saw me there when she got home at her normal time, but she made it clear I had to go someplace safe and I couldn't stay there unless my parents knew where I was. We compromised, and she took me to a place called Passage Crisis Center in Silver Spring. As a counselor there took me into a room to negotiate my return to my parents (and at that point, I didn't feel like I had a lot of options), my friend and her family had started talking to a different counselor. As it turned out, all their dirty laundry came falling out of the bag -- and it was very dirty -- that night. As a result, her parents ended up getting divorced. I always felt horrible about that, even though the actual reasons that led up to it happened long before then and none of it was my fault.

I'm thinking about this now because last week my friend's father and brother died six days apart. Her father was a child molester and her brother was a wife-beating drug addict. Both never adequately (in my view) paid for their crimes. Her father -- or "the sperm donor", as she calls him -- had dementia at the end, so he didn't have a chance to reflect on all the damage he had caused to the people around him. Her brother suffered some; his death wasn't quick and he knew it was. To meet my friend, you would never know any of this about her family. She has her life together better than anyone I know. Probably that's the best revenge. She doesn't care about revenge or dwelling on it. She gets that the only way to make your life better is to move forward and appreciate what you have. We talked on the phone for a long time yesterday, and if other people had overheard our conversation, they may have thought we were insane and mean bitches. We're not. We've just both learned that it's important to have a sense of humor even when -- especially when -- there's nothing funny about it.