At this moment I'm overcoming an instinctual desire and finding it difficult. Something inside me demands that I go, but isn't specific about where. And now, barely able to contain it, I wonder how many times I haven't contained it before.
How many of my major life decisions have been sponsored by an escape instinct?
I can remember other times like this. It only makes the push stronger. Fighting instinct like this is hard, like stopping a compulsion or ignoring intense hunger. It's disagreeing with yourself, with something you intensely feel and believe. It makes you feel crazy to stop yourself, even though that's exactly what's keeping you sane. I have to breathe, and control my breathing. I have to focus, carefully and it's hard to sit still.
I have to think if I ever felt this at full strength at a train station, I'd get on the next one going anywhere. I'd have crossed three state lines before I realized it was a bad idea. And I think I should never be given a credit card. Thinking back it's probably the real reason I used to carry my passport with me wherever I went. Why I always sit next to the door or window and sometimes clutch the sill. Why I used to take incredibly long, purposeless walks in the dead of night and middle of winter, back in college.
I'm just restless.