Have you ever felt like it would be easier to run away?
To leave everything that is plaguing you behind – all your worries, and thoughts, and failings¬– and just visit a different state of mind?
It can take you to actual locations such as the grimy, bustling streets of New York. It can be a place of the past; the creaking rusty swings of your childhood park.
It can even be your imagined future, a place you have yet to arrive, but will soon enough, lugging your overstuffed suitcase behind you.
Because the thing is, where you go is completely irrelevant, just as long as it liberates you from the confines of society, from your own expectations.
Just as long as it gives you the freedom to be as stupid and broken and inadequate as you feel.
It gives you the liberty to cry until you drain out all the hatred and ridicule and self-loathing that has accumulated over all these years of trying to maintain the perfect, confidence-exuding composure that society deems likable.
It allows you to take a good, hard look at yourself after you have cried and wept and torn out every nail that had been hammered into your heart.
It gives you all the time you need to reflect upon every selfless deed, kind word, and lovely thought you have ever possessed and finally love yourself for who you are and all that you’ve endured.
Your personal paradise is in every way, shape, and form perfect because it allows you to corrode and self-destruct and fall apart, until you can gather all your thoughts, pick up the smashed pieces, learn to appreciate yourself for who you are, and grow strong enough to beat away your inner demons.