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Health & Fitness

Running away from Home

Every person has moments in their life when they wish they could run away from home.

Every person has moments in their life when they wish they could run away from home. I am not talking about the 12-year-old boy who packs his book bag and disappears for two hours, only to run home again in time for dinner.

I am talking about the pressures of day to day life, the wife who is tired of folding the laundry, wiping the same counter day in and day out, often being ignored by her husband. What about the husband in a dead end job who listens to the country song inspiring him to sit on the beach all day, sipping a beer or margarita, just waiting for the tide to hit his beach chair.

Yet, most of us resist the impulse to leave home and stick it out, daydreaming of that day on the beach in solitude. As an adult you take your responsibilities as they occur, fantasizing about sitting on that beach, riding that wave in solitude. My father would "run away" from home quite often when I was a child. My parents would have a fight; my dad would storm out and leave the house, at least until dinner. When dinner was almost ready to be put on the table, my mom would yell for one of us kids to walk up the street and find dad, who sat in his car parked on the street, listening to the ball game or a sports talk show. My mother took it for granted that dad would return without complaint. The fight would be forgotten and the mundane tasks of life would continue as before. What would have happened if one day my dad kept driving to that beach, leaving my mother with the responsibilities of raising three children by herself, not knowing if my father was dead or alive?

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There have been many times in my life I have wanted to run away from home, yet I resisted that impulse and went shopping instead. I think we all harbor fantasizes of a better life, winning the lottery, getting that promotion, being thinner, just having a surreal life. We wait for our children to grow up, thinking that we will no longer have to worry about them – not so true. So we dream, dream of the perfect job, the perfect children, the perfect figure, the perfect mate, the billion dollars. ... Then we wake up, wipe the sleep out of our eyes, and begin another day.   

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