Nothing feels right. Everything is new, so uncomfortably fresh that even the air has a different way of flowing. Skyscrapers seem to fade into the clouds making the skyline nearly inseparable from the end of the building.  I feel the weight of my duffle bag on my shoulders holding everything I own. No, that's not true. I own so many things, things that I don't need. I am carrying on my back what I need to survive- nearly nine hundred thousand dollars conveniently packed into a thin piece of plastic, my birth certificate, socially security card, a bottle of water and a granola bar. Other than that, I have nothing, but I chose this. I had a choice and I chose to run.

People pass me by so quickly I barely catch a glimpse of their face. It seems as if they are crowding around me, but they are simply walking. And then I ask the surprisingly unasked question of where are all of these people walking? Do they live in these endless skyscrapers? Is this the place they call home? I don't know, and I'm okay with that. Not knowing isn't a bad thing, but one thought lingers in the back of my mind. One terrible, horrifying, underlying thought. Have I ever seen one person in this city before or will I never run into an old friend on the street? Am I completely alone?

I wander through the busy side walks, walking aimlessly. Where am I going? What am I even doing here? I don’t know anything or anyone. I don’t have a place to sleep or know which café has the down to earth coffee and which has the mainstream, overpriced one. No. I can't think like this. Not if I want to start over. Not if I want my life to be normal. I nearly collapse on the ground from the irony of that last thought. Normal? This isn't normal. Picking up and leaving your home, your family and job isn't normal. People don't just disappear without warning. Well, most people don't. I do, or I did. I left. No one knew, not even a soul. Standing here, on some street corner in a random city, I doubt that I made the right choice. I take a deep breath and think about what my life used to look like. Horrifying images pop into my mind. I made the right choice by leaving. I may not know where I am or what I'm doing. I might not even know exactly what I'm running from. But I am running. And there's no going back. I can't go back to that.

Suddenly, the world gets a little brighter. Everything is different now. I changed my life,which is previously something that I had failed to do for years. My life was crowded with stress and sadness. I was so lost in finding myself that I forgot to live. The things that I used to care about became insignificant, but even worse I became insignificant. I didn't care about how I looked or if I was sad. Nobody else did, why should I? Why put effort into something broken? That, that thought right there is when things really turned dark. I stopped fighting. Not that I should've kept fighting, but I gave up. Not fighting and giving up are two very different things. Not fighting is guarding your heart because it's too fragile to be broken again. Giving up is destroying yourself and the people who love you in an attempt to guard your heart, but all your really doing is throwing it away. I gave up and in this situation, there was no other option, no other out. Running from your problems or your screwed up life isn't always, or almost never, the right answer. Although, there is a point where you truly can't take any more ---- and the only way that you survive is if you run.