To ask if you fantasise about ESCAPE?

[Runningjustasfastaswecan]

How often do you imagine just running away? You know, abandoning your family, kids, all anxieties, guilt, responsibilities... And if you do, where do you imagine going? My top 3 fantasies are:

1. becoming a Buddhist nun (Tibetan mountains maybe).
2. becoming a hermit on Orkney.
3. running off to Barbados with Hugh Jackman.

AIBU?

I used to fantasise about being hit by a car and spending a week in hospital. The children were smaller then, I'm quite happy these days.

I regularly fantasize about packing up my family and moving us somewhere incredibly remote and off grid (think "Lives in the Wild" ). I'd love to get away from the stresses of modern life and just concentrate on the basics (bears, not starving to death). We could sing and play music together in the evenings, that sort of thing.

Unfortunately for me, dh and kids are all horrified at the thought and are soft, luxury loving types and annoyingly gregarious.

Every time I'm on a rush hour tube.
I just dream of living in Alaska and traveling by dog sleigh.

Centrally heated stone cottage which miraculously doesn't attract mud from the windswept moors, waitrose and deramores deliveries and a personal trainer.

velvet me too. Then had a lovejy few years of kids at school and me time.

Now kids teenagers and i have older with grandchildren i help care for and my dm has altzimers and dad needs care and all down to me the fantasy is back.

My fantasties involve being able to wee alone and have a piping hot cup of coffee in utter silence.

I could have managed the coffee today in the garden about 4am. But it was pissing with rain :(

Yep, I've had the prison fantasy too, Beryl... Has to be a shortish sentence, and you have to have been convicted of something morally excellent and courageous so you don't have to have any guilt, though...

don't want to escape from family ot friends permanently, but have long wished i could own my very own flat . a large studio would be fine . decorated just the way i like it . no toys, dirty clothes dishes in the sink or , best of all no match attax cards ANYWHERE!
i could go there during the days I'm not working and just enjoy my own pleasant space.

i would LOVE that ☺

Yep!

A nice cottage by the sea, with a garden and a swimming pool. A dog, a goat, a mini pig and several cats for company. A massive library full of books and not a care in the world....

I've done this, week in a psychiatric hospital. It was amazing and they give you drugs and cuppas.

I missed the kids about day 6 so got myself kicked out.

Mine involves being an astronaut; maybe to mars. I could have video contact every week and wow my children with my anti gravity ttivks

I read the memoirs of a woman who had moved from Australia to the West coast of New Zealand's South Island. They were a couple of days' hike from anywhere, and had to have most things flown in every couple of months. They were essentially living in a shack they built for themselves, and raised a family like that.

It sounded so difficult and at times genuinely life threatening. But what they seemed to gain from it was enormous. Predictably the sons went on to study biology and conservation (if i remember correctly).

The hardship doesn't repel me actually, I find it quite attractive. I dream of stepping out of my front door and seeing a small, fenced in kitchen garden, then looking left and right and seeing just land, trees and the natural world. Hopefully a national park or undeveloped land that belonged to no one. Ahead of me would be cliffs and a crashing sea. I imagine a waterfall over the cliffs into the sea (although I appreciate that's not really how rivers work!)

Not running away from it all, but dh and I have had a fantasy about running away from it all together and living on a sailboat, or heading up to the far, far north of Canada for a few years.
We are empty nesters-to-be and so this talk has come up a bit more lately

God, yes! I'm so tired of all the demands on me. My most frequent fantasy is to have to be in hospital for about 2 weeks - not feeling too ill, of course. Maybe break a leg. Not that I've ever broken a bone so maybe it makes you feel worse than I imagine.

Other than that, I think I'd like to be a hermit. As others have said, lots of books, nice walks, peace and quiet to think. Bliss!

I am pretty happy with my life now but about 10 years ago I did a job I hated for a couple of years. Every day I would change trains at Clapham Junction station and hear the trains being announced to the south coast and every morning I fantasised about getting on one and just not going to work.

Yes and I did it (but I did come back).
Last year I ran off for a month on my own, going to Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Abu Dhabi, while I did see friends in half the places, I was off work and left everyone else behind.
It was a life saver.

In the previous two years, my partner had become very ill with depression following on from a bereavement and redundancy and my best friend had inflammatory breast cancer (she's in remission now).

Once my gent was back working, in stable care with the kids ok and my pal in remission, I buggered off for a month. I wanted to get myself back, so to speak. And yes, I know my good fortune - my job was ok with it, I had the cash - I also know that it was the right thing to do because I knew I wanted to come back.

Yes! Especially when you've been ill for a week yourself and you're cleaning massive amounts of toddler sick out of your cream carpet for the third time this week.

I'd just go abroad, small hot beachy island somewhere. Have a nice little homely hut to live in and some kind of non demanding job where I can go eat my lunch on the beach every day......

In reality I'd miss oh and ds but the thought Is appealing.

If I thought we could all live that life I'd leave tomorrow just be cleaning sick off my hut floor instead

When the kids were young I used to fantasise about getting a stinking cold that would keep me in bed for a whole week. Someone else (probably OH) would have had to do everything - cooking, cleaning, nappies, bedtimes, bathtimes, everything ! Oh the bliss of lying in bed for a whole week (alone - so not listening to someone else snoring !)

ALL the time.

Not forever. Just for a week. Me and DH on a Greek island with a big stack of books and no child. Shagging all morning, reading on the beach all afternoon, eating and drinking in beachside restaurants and then going back to watch boxsets all evening.

Me, definitely. To a self-tidying house with coffee and wine on tap that's perennially 25 degrees C indoors.

I also fantasise about a short prison sentence in a low security jail 😉

I dream of abandoning my job and winning the lottery and living somewhere warm but I need my friends and mum to come too!

OMD you can apply to be a hermit?! I bet it costs a lot?

Goldfish, this wasn't the one, but it's all I could find online, though from a while back:

www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/aug/20/arts.artsnews

Disappointingly, you only got to do it for the weekend.

I occasionally envied Sr Wendy Beckett - getting to live as a hermit in the grounds of a Carmelite convent, only seeing the Prioress at long intervals, plus the nun who brings her food, but dropping in to the city every so often to make art history TV programmes, looking rather dashing in a habit. And there's something cool about having your Wikipedia entry say 'British hermit, consecrated virgin and art historian'.