Travelling

"Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go."

I feel this way a lot of the time. There are times when I feel like I can't escape from the things that tie me down. Of course, I'm mainly talking about my past. I feel like I can see it in some people's eyes when they look at me or talk to me. That discomfort and uneasiness. That's why I like meeting new people now; they know nothing of the shadow that consumer the last 2 years of my life. I also stick with the people who were with me through it all, since they seem to understand that a lot of that is behind me. This quote also reminds me of a song by Matchbox Twenty...

"And I'm so
Terrified of no one else but me
I'm here all the time
I wont go away
Its me, yeah I cant get myself to go away"

Another way I relate to this is the speaker's ways of coping. He tries to run away from his troubles, which is what I tried to do at one point. However, I learned, just like the speaker does, that it doesn't work. You can only run for so long, and even then, the demons always catch up with you. I learned that I have to stop and face them instead of looking the other way or sprinting as fast as I can. Now that I've confronted them, I can wake up without those feelings of remorse.