My failed attempt at running away from home.

As the title says, I fail at running away from home. With epic precision.

I just decided yesterday that I'd pack my nirvana messenger bag with various essentials (Coat, Inhaler, iPod, warm clothes, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Notepad and pen) and then escape out of the study window and run away for a few hours.

I ran all the way down the long, winding hill that leads to Petit Bot, the beach just down the road from me. I thought I would sit in one of the caves along the side of the beach (it's in-between two cliffs) and read for a few hours,

I'm not really sure why I did that.

It was partly rebellion against my parents, but other than that...

I don't know why, but I just wanted to get out of the house.

It's like there are bad memories attached to this house, but I can't remember them. I just don't like it.

Sometimes I feel incredibly alone, on my own in this big, old house.

Also, all the nightmares and monsters of my childhood still lurk in this house, in the back of my mind.

Something inside of me snapped, but I'm not sure what or the reason behind it.

I just wanted to get out.

So I jumped out of the study window (it's not high up or anything, I didn't literally jump you fools) and ran for it down that hill.

I felt like a fugitive half the time, like a paranoid idiot the other half.

I didn't want to listen to my iPod incase I couldn't hear someone following me, that's just how paranoid I was.

So yes, I ran down the hill to the beach, but didn't go on the actual beach in the end. Too many dog walkers around.

Instead I sat in one of the small windows of a Martello tower and read my book. After a while I stopped paying attention to the book and chose instead to watch the dogs gallavanting across the sand and the waves pushing up the beach.

Then I heard voices, got paranoid again, and then moved to a different bench higher up, directly facing the top of the martello tower.

The reason why how it was facing the tower is this: I got distracted from reading by a bird of prey (later identified as a Kestrel) swooping down and landing precariously on the edge of the tower.

I watched it, transfixed, as it perched. It swayed slightly, then shuffled down the tower.

Then it dropped.

Before my heart could even skip a beat before it had plunged out of view.

I did not know whether it had flown off or simply dropped.

I shoved my book in my bag and ran down the steps to see what had happened to it.

It lay, a small bundle of brown feathers, on the ground, unmoving.

I thought it was dead, but, with my approach, the bird lifted its head and looked at me with its glassy, wide brown eyes.

Then it flew away, instinct telling it to flee, a few metres before resting again in a heap on the ground. It was obviously injured.

For a few minutes I dithered, not knowing what to do, until some scottish man I questioned told me to use the cafe's phone.

So I strolled into the cafe and asked them to phone the animal shelter for the bird.

The guy I talked to, a young foreigner with intense blue eyes and a mop of blonde wavy hair, explained that he didn't know any of the animal shelters, so I had to do it instead.

After trying in vain to communicating over the cheesy music in the cafe, and then the rushing water of the waterfall outside the cafe, I managed to tell the lady from the animal shelter about the bird.

I was asked to keep watch on it, so that I did.

By this time it was perched on a sign-post not too far away from where I'd last saw it.

It'll be alright as long as I don't scare it I thought to myself, silent whilst leaning against a wall near the bird.

I didn't take other people into account.

A young couple, loud and jubilant, were walking towards us and I had two options.

Either let them pass and scare off the bird, or tell them to be quiet and similarly scare off the bird.

I managed to reach a compromise: I was about to tell them to be quiet when the bird was scared off.

it flew over the roof of the cafe and out of my sight.

I ran after it, cursing myself and the bloody bird.

I'd lost it.

At this point the animal shelter had phoned back for me, asking me to wait longer, and I explained that I had lost it.

I received a 'nature is a harsh thing' talk before being hung up on and having to pass the phone back to the foreign guy.

Then I received a similar speech from the owner of the cafe before walking outside and debating whether to go back to the bench or not.

I turned back to the eyes of the owner and foreign guy watching me, so I decided not to.

Then I thought to myself Screw it, I'm going home.

No nature-related revelation, no kestrel-influenced reverie, brought me to this decision.

I just wanted to go home.

So I did, taking the long, tiring scenic route uphill for reasons that are beyond me.

Tired and out of breath, I slumped through the kitchen door to the similarly staring eyes of my parents and my grandparents, who were blatantly clueless as to why I hadn't been at dinner and why I was away.

I was unnaturally happy - it must have been the post-exercise endorphins kicking in.

Nothing was mentioned as I ate my dinner and chatted happily (with the odd cough or two - I was still ill at this point and in fact still am now)

Even when the grand-rents had gone there was no lecture.

One person was in the know by this point (via the magical MSN) and was my confidante in parental paranoia the whole time.

There was no lecture in the end.

I got so paranoid that I ended up bringing it up myself to my father.

When I said that I just wanted to get out the house he said

'Fair enough. Fresh air's good for you.'

I nearly chocked on something inexistent, that was how shocked I was.

This was unnatural for my father, being calm and collected.

Agreeing with me.

My mother didn't say anything either.

How odd.

Yet how fantastic.

It turns out that I ran away from home for the total time of one and a half hours.

I guess if you could gleam some sort of moral out of this stupid story that illustrates the tedium of my life, it would be this:

Running away from home is the most boring, tiring, pointless thing ever.

Unless you're in a really desperate situation, don't bother doing it.

That is Camille's moral lesson for today, kids :P
October 6th, 2008 at 06:20pm