I have to go!

I sat with my friend Sarah outside watching her eat crab cakes and French fries yesterday as I sipped on my Chai.  She was talking about ADHD and anxiety and the connection between the two and how sometimes she is drinking coffee on a date and then has to go! and how new guys that she is seeing don’t always understand. I said to her that I know what you mean!  Sometimes I just have to leave and am not sure why and she laughed and says, “you have taken it all in” (as she looks around) "and there is nothing more for you here and now you have to move on.”  Yes, that is it.  And I have a story to tell.

Once upon a time I was about 10 and was playing at a new friend’s house.  She was a year younger than I was and I don’t remember much about her other than that and she had brown curly hair.  And on this day that I was playing with her I got that sense that I have to go.  It had started raining and it was time for me to leave (or at least I thought it was).  I said "I have to leave now" and got that panicky feeling I get when it is time to move on and hastily made for the door. 

Her mom grabbed my arm though and said, “You can’t leave now it’s raining.”  I don’t know if she was going to drive me home or what, but all I knew at the time was this intense need to break free and being prevented from doing so. I shrugged off her arm as forcefully as she held onto it and bolted out the door and ran home.  I felt badly afterwards like I had been rude and that they wouldn’t understand as I could barely understand this need to be released to leave.  It seemed odd her mom’s need to try to keep me there.  A control that wasn’t necessary as I just lived down the street and there really wasn’t much concern with me walking home.

​I don’t remember seeing Dorrie much after that but do remember praying for her mom every night.   She died of breast cancer a year or so later and I would include her in my nightly prayers.  Always feeling partly responsible (as kids irrationally sometimes do) for trying to break free of her that day.