There is an exquisite happiness, a combination of wonder, joy, awe, contentment, and adventure which I have experienced only on rare occasions. Yet I have noticed it frequently enough in my adult life to make note of it, and now I find myself seeking it wherever I go.
I have sought it especially since graduating college as I puzzled over where to plant myself for my adult life, or for the beginning of it, since I can only plan so far ahead, not knowing what new incentives will guide my steps as the future unfolds. A quote I love by Kurt Vonnegut is “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy,” presumably so we recognize what produces that state and reorder our priorities accordingly.
Thus began the hunt for this elusive thing. I’m not sure whether this is the kind of hunger which guides one to a richer, fuller life or if it is more the kind of craving that can drive one crazy when one is in the midst of every reason to feel content.
Today I finally realized what it was I’ve been seeking: a place to disappear.
Not in the sense of not existing, but in the sense that I am free to experience without being noticed, with plenty of wonder for me to absorb. I’ve felt this sometimes when the lights go down at a play or, less often, a movie, when I am allowed to be completely enveloped in the story. No one is concerned where I am or what I’m thinking, because they are equally absorbed and it is expected that we should each be absorbed in our own way.
Another instance came last December when my parents took me to a small town to hear a friend’s band play. The bar where they played was completely different from any other I’ve visited, all light wood and cozy lighting, with families sitting in the gallery above the band. People drank sodas and seasonal beverages as well as beer, and the atmosphere was friendly without being obtrusive, like a gathering at which everyone already knows each other and has caught up and now is ready to relax.
The rest of the town was similarly comfortable and fascinating: there were carriage rides, hot chocolate, and cute little shops all done up for Christmas, as well as a blacksmithing station. I loved the ability to explore and experience everything without feeling observed. This may stem from social anxiety on my part, I’m realizing, but it’s not that I want to be alone. It’s that I want to be comfortably anonymous, either with friends and family or by myself.
Oddly enough for an introvert, I also get this when we’ve got a house full of beloved company or when I lived with two or more roommates in college. The sensation of being surrounded by happy chaos but having some choice whether to involve myself was deeply satisfying to me. Note that this is happy chaos, as in people who like each other even if they bicker constantly, especially when everyone is preparing for something (think My Big Fat Greek Wedding the morning of the wedding).
Tougher to define is where I’d like to disappear. I like places loaded with mystery and beauty. I visited one such place this morning, an old theater connected to a Victorian mansion which the public can tour. While I loved being immersed in the ornate style and could easily imagine my own mysteries from the rich stillness of a balcony seat between performances, I wasn’t quite able to disappear. There wasn’t quite enough space to be comfortably lost, and too many opportunities to run into curious glances. Another petty detail that bothered me was that the floors were too loud. Don’t get me wrong, I love old buildings and their creaky floors, but this one had enough creak to turn me from a natural ninja to sounding like I had an army of elephants in tow. I’ve been in the habit of accidentally sneaking up on people since childhood, so this was altogether unnerving to me.
Since this morning, I’ve reflected on what other places I’ve been drawn to, from old mansions to libraries to any place where live music is played. I crave anyplace that is laden with story, hence my love of old mansions and unhealthy fascination with ghost stories, which always ends in regret.
Why is it often hard for me to be swept away? Besides feeling watched or self-conscious, a setting can be uninspiring or disturbing. If disappearing is unsafe due to crowds or atmosphere, it’s not a good fit, but more often it’s mere taste. For instance, places that look too modern can make me feel cold and restless, like I can’t get comfortable. Most places don’t have enough character to hold me, either – if the mood is grudgingly run-of-the-mill, it can make it hard to disappear, though I have found myself fascinated by seemingly ordinary places if they strike up a story in my mind.
Old bookstores are an endless source of both intrigue and disappointment. I’ve found some of my best adventures through books, and no feeling quite equals having unearthed a book no one you know has read but that you come to love, but I’ve had equivocal luck at finding the right ones. Since losing my job, I’ve been digging through movies the same way. The bane of my existence is when an author creates a fascinating premise for a story and then ruins it, sometimes by following their audience’s fickle preferences or presuming to know them, sometimes by adding vulgar scenes that make me abandon the book, and others by sheer sloppiness. To used bookstores I often repair full of hope, but I often leave emptyhanded and discouraged.
Much of my desire to disappear seems to be a thirst for inspiration, seeking quality food for my mind. The smallest things can bring me endless fascination, from an image of elegant architecture to the simple relationship of a pair of strangers or even the way someone dresses. I’ve stared people down in public because I wanted to memorize every detail of their appearance for a character.
On the darker side, I agree with Gore Vidal, that “The unfed mind devours itself.” Mine in particular. You may know that I have struggled with mental illness all my life, and one of the worst things I can do is allow my brain to dwell instead of feeding it something new to chew on. If not supplied with rations, it will destroy itself by making monsters of everything around me and especially myself. My healthy way of “chewing on” something is constantly producing stories, and that requires new input.
When I’m in a particularly disappear-able setting, it’s like the place is telling me stories all the time, and when I piece together enough fragments, I can write a tale of my own. This continuous hum is like music; it soothes me and keeps me from losing control and blundering into telling myself horrible things about myself. The same satisfaction I get from these story places, I also seem to get from listening to symphonic metal. (Think heavy metal, but with more classical and dramatic elements.) That level of drama and intensity is going on inside me all the time, and when I find a frequency to match it, it calms me down. Yeah, go figure.
Part of what drew me to this city was the sense that there was much to inspire, old historic buildings mixed in with flashy new ones, big arenas beside hole-in-the-wall shops and cafes, character-filled homes everywhere! Lots of places to disappear. However, they are proving harder to find than I’d expected. Harder yet has been finding kindred spirits. I’d love to meet other creators who can share their passions with each other even if we don’t have the same interests, and to find some safe think-space to repair to where I could find more of them and work or simply exist side by side.
Part of me thinks I seek a home for my heart, but the rest suspects I have a traveler’s soul, meant to visit all over the world without rooting myself to one place, always allowing me the freedom to disappear somewhere else. Surprising, since I was such a homebody as a child, always content to be home with my toys and my family and the stories I made up, but I was brought up vacationing around the country and have since studied abroad, which has shown me many more inspiring places to disappear.
I have a Pinterest board named “My Dream Home,” and I kid you not, it contains two opposing pictures of the ideal life in my eyes: one is an elegant mansion, and the other, a gypsy caravan sort of like a tiny home which I could ride all over the world. These are the two conflicting sides of my soul, the one which desires much and the one which requires little, the part that means to find its perfect home and remain versus its adversary who wants to see the world and not settle anywhere. Sometimes disappearing, like when I stay at someone’s house or am overcome with a book or movie that’s new to me, it’s like I exist outside my own life and my worries didn’t receive a forwarding address. At times I toy with the idea of a completely errant lifestyle, staying in one place only for a month or so at a time, never giving my old fears time to catch up.
It’s hard to listen to one’s heart when it has so much to say that is contradictory. I used to wonder if it was wrong of me and materialistic to think this way and be so fascinated by places and things, but I have to remember that every good thing comes from God. Worship of things, making them more important than God and people, is evil and corrupting, but to enjoy what is good is harmless. I will have to spend my life finding that balance, remembering that the same God who commands me to love him and his people above all else is the God who put this creator’s fire in my heart and gave my mind its peculiar turns.
The insistent craving to live enveloped in story is a double-edged sword. It fills me with aching desire when I seek it, delight and wonder when fulfilled, and a residual fear that it will all come to nothing, that the same way a play ends when the curtain falls, my dreams will never be reality and I will be forever left cold in my seat in an empty theater. I’ve had a recurring nightmare since I was a child that I was constantly seeking something only to find that it didn’t exist. The dream has morphed with the phases of my life but essentially remained the same: a treasure-hunt that led to an empty vault, the perfect adventure revealed to be only imaginary, a wedding with no groom.
I think one of my greatest fears is that I will reach the end of my life still hungry. I feel like a treasure hunter who can sense that the world is laced with veins of gold but doesn’t know where to find them and, having searched the surface of the earth, isn’t sure where or whether he has the resources to start to dig, nor whether he has enough time to discover even one vein of gold before his life ends.
It’s easy to feel like King Solomon when I think of this, seeing every earthly endeavor as empty and meaningless. I think that’s where faith comes in; you have to accept that the journey is worth the effort, and in order to do so, you have to fix your sights on worthwhile things. I pray that God will direct my heart and either fulfill or temper its cravings, leading me to the life I’m meant to live and helping me not to be lost in selfish fantasy but to live his grand adventure, receiving every twist and turn as necessary to the journey and accepting its end wherever I find it. I am anxious and eager to live my portion of his tapestry, but he is the Great Creator; I know he will turn all things right in the end.
