The problem with away is you’re still you when you get there. Geographic cures don’t work, and God knows I’ve tried. New fixes almost nothing, although things can seem better during the honeymoon period. But the bigger the problem, the more likely it is to pop up sooner rather than later.

If you’re attempting an escape, keep it moderately local. I once tried to escaping myself with a trip to Mexico. It could’ve gone better. Lesson number two – listen to your inner voice.

I’m currently watching “Invasion” on Apple TV, a show that is tedious, hard to watch (literally – the cinematography is dark), multicultural, fascinating, and addictive. In the season finale, Aneesha tells her son that listening to your inside voice is vital. It can save you. I wish I’d had an Aneesha at the airport: I knew before the plane took off that I was in trouble. Getting back was more challenging than if I’d made a break for it with my car.

I like meditating. I like meditating for the same reason I liked drinking to excess (I no longer do the latter: the recovery period increases with age, and I don’t like being down for a day). I like the quiet brain. Mine is busy, chattering at me and often in a negative fashion nearly all the time. It’s like having a radio on in the background, but one that plays lousy music. Perhaps that’s why I keep the radio or television turned on. In the quiet, my thoughts can get loud.

A vacation from my brain, or a least from the bits and pieces that make up my mental illnesses, would be nice. I’m not sure I want those bits permanently gone. It could be Stockholm Syndrome, but I had the thought that a cure would mean a fundamental change. I’m not a fan of the deep dark of depression, but along with the misery, my mental illnesses bring gifts, such as patience, tolerance, and empathy. The gifts are ‘generally speaking,’ since, of late, my brain is too busy constructing revenge fantasies about people who cause me pain to have empathy on the list. My friends are jerks, and it’s getting old. Part of the problem is my tendency to doormat and my “friends” tendency to take advantage of that fact. I must be a slow learner. I’ve been in similar circumstances before.

If I let people do whatever they want, they’ll stop being nasty and start being nice because they’ll realize that I’m a good person. Then I’ll be able to ask for what I want.

That would be an absolute failure of thinking driven by my severe anxiety. Teaching children with anxiety the appropriate coping skills is necessary and something I missed, though I think changes to the philosophical underpinnings of education are a current help.

That’s the trip I’d like. Away from my brain and away from Doormatville. Permanently. I want a new address at Good Boundaries Court. I’ll probably give up the evil revenge intentions that involve impractical magical thinking and accept that my friends and family are imperfectly human. Obsessing about the past keeps you trapped there anyway. And wallowing in the dark bits of the past is a trip no one needs to take.