On the Failure of Escape

When someone moves to a new country, it’s easy to call it reinvention. A fresh start. A clean break from whatever came before. But sometimes it’s none of those things. Sometimes it’s escape. Not the cinematic kind. Not running toward something better. Just a quiet, practical decision to put distance between yourself and a life that no longer fits—or maybe never did. What drives it isn’t always easy to name, only to recognize in hindsight.

The point is to get away from it.

For a while, that works. Everything becomes difficult in a way that feels almost productive. New language. New streets. Basic things that used to be automatic now require attention, effort, thought. And in that effort, something else disappears. You stop thinking about yourself. Or at least, you think about yourself less. That was the relief.

Before I left, there were already things I didn’t want to look at too closely. The slow, inevitable loss of my mother—the kind of grief that begins long before the person is gone. The quiet unraveling of (several) friendships that didn’t survive who I became, or maybe just didn’t survive time. It’s hard to tell the difference when you’re in it.

And beneath all of that was something harder to admit. The suspicion that whatever mattered most in my life had already happened. That everything ahead of me would be smaller. Less significant. That I had missed something—or all the somethings—without realizing it at the time.

I was expected to hide that. To be grateful. Predictable. Easy.

I wasn’t.

At different points in my life, people who knew me well—well enough that it stayed with me—told me I was difficult to love. That being around me required patience. Energy. More than most people were willing or able to give. I didn’t accept that at first. Then I rejected it outright. But over time, when the same observation comes from different people who have nothing to gain from saying it, it starts to settle in. Maybe they were right. Maybe I ask too much without realizing it. Maybe I exhaust people. Maybe the version of me that exists in my own head doesn’t line up with the one people experience. And maybe distance doesn’t just make things clearer—maybe sometimes it just makes absence feel lighter.

When I moved, all of that noise went quiet.

Not because it was resolved, but because I didn’t have the space to think about it. Every part of my attention was taken up by learning how to exist again. The simple things—ordering food, navigating streets, understanding conversations—became full-time work.

And in that, there was relief.

I told myself I was chasing something. Adventure, maybe. Reinvention, if I wanted to make it sound intentional. But the truth was simpler than that. I thought I was leaving. I was actually carrying everything with me. It just took time for it to catch up. Because eventually, the unfamiliar becomes familiar. The streets make sense. The language comes easier. The effort fades. And when that happens, the noise comes back. Not all at once. Just enough to notice. The same questions, waiting where you left them.

What are you actually doing?
Who does it matter to?
Was any of it ever going to mean anything?

I used to think those were questions I could outrun. That if I kept moving, kept changing the scenery, something would eventually shift. That meaning was something external. A place you arrive at. It isn’t. Or at least, I haven’t found any evidence that it is. What I’ve found instead is smaller than that. Easier to miss if you’re not paying attention: Moments, brief ones; A good meal in a place you can’t pronounce; A conversation that doesn’t last but stays with you longer than it should; The feeling, just for a second, that you’ve stepped outside of yourself. I understand the appeal of that kind of life. I’ve lived it. But the moment ends. It always does.

And at the end of the day—no matter where you are, how far you’ve gone, how different it all looks—you’re still there. In your own skin. With the same thoughts, the same fears, the same quiet weight you thought distance might loosen. Travel doesn’t erase any of it. It just gives you something beautiful to look at while you carry it. And eventually, if you’re honest, you stop calling it escape. You stop pretending it’s reinvention. You call it what it is; a way of living with yourself. Because the truth is, the pain, the fear, the loneliness—they don’t stay behind. They follow. Patient. Unchanged. Waiting for you to slow down long enough to notice they never left. And when you do, there’s not much left to figure out:

You were never going anywhere.

• On the Failure of Escape
• The Belief Machine: PART 3-On The Hypocrisy of Belief
• The Belief Machine: PART 2-On The Business of Belief
• The Belief Machine: PART 1-On The Making of Belief
• THE PUBLIC MORALITY SHOW: Behind Jimmy Jackson’s Online Persona and Political Agenda