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At some point, however, you just have to make the decision to move on. This life is eating you alive, and you can feel to the marrow of your bones and behind your chattering teeth that it needs changing, and fast.

So you leave. Pack what you need and give the rest to Salvation Army, leave work, school, friends, your lease, and your lover. Tell him you love him too much to stay; tell him you’re running for your life. And go.

I took the train. From the window I watched the grimy, sticky city fall away, and the wide skies of the West open up before me. We rumbled over the Mississippi during dinner the second night, and I found I could eat again. By the time we reached Albuquerque, some sort of cloud had been lifted from me. Maybe it was happiness leaving for a lighter place, but the first solid bricks of contentment were laid watching the country whirl past. Sunrise over the desert is not a thing to be taken lightly.

But when you leave, where do you go? Home, of course – but what if home is gone from you? You’ve been too long apart and the familiar crossroads and corners are suddenly alien, bristling with new stop signs and pedestrians you don’t recognize in the least. Nestle yourself in the life you’d left to begin with, but it doesn’t fit anymore.

And, when you slow down enough to taste the air, you can feel the lopsided pounding of your heart, thudding achingly where the fractures haven’t healed. You can call yourself free, but the spiderweb chains of memory and habit won’t release you so quickly. Eventually the silence steps in. Spend whole days alone, the racket in your head slowly ebbing, the sunlight seeping through. Suddenly it’s spring, and your hometown is blooming, sending sprays of pollen bursting with plantsex into the air around you.

Learn how to walk: the rhythm of it became a mantra, each step a holy word. Every tree I passed was a hallelujah, every breaking of the ocean on the rocks a gift from god. Here, the wafting of dust in the slanting sun, the steam from my coffee, the ache in my legs. Walk until you’ve forgotten what you were running from.

It isn’t easy to recognize your own failure when the sun gets into your eyes. I thought I was being honest the whole time, but it turns out I’d been lying to everyone and most especially myself. Imagine: you are in love, so fierce and wild that all your memories of it are spun with thunder. You never thought it could be so good; you never thought you would be so lucky. But you are fickle even when you don’t want to be, and the next gorgeous shining thing catches your eye. A heart breaks every moment, and this one is no exception. Suddenly you find yourself torn between two beauties: heaven or Valhalla, a steam engine tied to each arm. It is a slow and brutal ripping that finds you at the end in two pieces, alone. It is a guilt that never leaves you.

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