Dramatic Exit.

The Silent Urge To Escape.

Apr 20, 2025

There’s a solitude that blots over me in the spring rain. In the early morning when the birds don’t sing and the canopy slips a few drops like taps upon my hoodie. Despite the mess in my head, I fantasise about escaping the city. Dramatic exit, stage left. The whole world wondering where I’ve gone, disappeared, evaporated to.

Sometimes it’s too much for me. Too much. Even for me. I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand. I wonder sometimes if my friends know me. If they can see—me. Not the reactions to their words, not the response to their desires, not the reflection of themselves. Me. The one who sleeps with the lights off and travels beyond any known place. The one alone and silent, still and resolute.

In the heat of my escape, I’ll fall down beneath the birch trees and listen to the earth’s axis turn. Then there’ll be a silence. A silence that shows me something real is happening. That my life is mine, and not something that is happening to me. If I can keep that in mind, I can do the right thing, whatever that means.

Wherever you go, there you are. I know, yet I keep running. Keep moving, keep treading, keep faltering on each foot like I can’t bear the weight of my own steps. The birch trees, like beacons to my advance, are never far away. For some reason, they’re always over there. Always on the left, and me, always on the right.

When you grow up in a cold climate, the heat is savoured anywhere. Let’s hang out in the car park and feel the steam rise off the tarmac. I’ll try to let the warmth touch my bones until I realise I’m looking for understanding in the wrong place.

‘What do you think?’ I hear them say, and I don’t look, but I listen.

‘Thirty-five,’ a voice replies.

And I look up to see them staring at me.

‘But a good thirty-five,’ they say, and I get in my car and drive away.

When you ignore your desires for long enough, they become the indistinguishable sounds of normality. They sound like distant construction, like a rumbling car motor, like a faint cough always out of sight. My mind is a tape imprinted by sounds overheard; fragments of conversation, one-sided phone calls, miss-the-mark jokes and out-of-place song lyrics. Every night, my tape of miscellaneous sound uncoils itself between my eyes and drips like wet adhesive along my cheeks. The noise replays ad infinitum until it’s washed away by the rain.

With the things you can do, you should be on the highway by now. Hair blowing in the wind, upper lip curling over your teeth. Why are you still here? You should be gone, leaving, left, and I should stay here listening to the rain.

When I lie down at night, I make a list of all the things I need to do. Then I fall asleep and forget everything.

This morning, when I finally got away from it all, I understood. Where I want to stand is amongst the birch trees. To stand and look at them the way they’ve stood and seen me. To take them in like no one has before, even if they’ve been stared at for an entire lifetime. If I stay still for long enough, I think the trees would speak. Not in words, but in sways, in creaks, in the light clatter of wood on wood.

Become who you are. That’s what they’d say. The act that requires no act, the doing that is already done. Then, there’d be no need to escape. In all this frenetic frenzy, there I’ll be. In the midst of it, in the getaway, I’ll know I can’t outrun myself.

Then, I’ll see it. Birch trees, on the left. Me, on the right. And the moment, right there, in the middle.

Appreciate you reading this far. Since I was a kid, I’ve felt an urge to escape, to run, to flee—especially during times when life got too much. The last few weeks have been intense, in a good way—but also, in a way that’s made me want to disappear. Writing this down has been a good way of making sense of it all. If you can relate, I’d love to hear more in the comments. Till soon,

iL.