How to run away? What people considered before leaving home or their whole life

Two very different questions under the same words

On this site, "how to run away" is asked by two kinds of people. Teenagers, like the readers who wrote should I run away from home? and I want to run away, describing a house where every evening is an argument or worse. And adults, like the one who asked how to run away and start a new life, who are not in danger but cannot bear the life they built.

The replies treat them differently, and so does this page. For a minor, the question is about safety first. For an adult, it is about whether leaving is an escape or a decision.

If you are a teenager: what the replies ask before anything else

The first thing the replies ask is whether the author is safe. When the story describes being hit, threatened, starved or thrown out, the replies stop discussing running away and talk about getting help: a trusted adult, a school counselor, a relative, or child protection services, which exist in every country and can be contacted without a parent knowing. Running away without a place to go puts a minor in more danger than most houses, and the people replying say it bluntly because some of them have done it.

When the story is about a house that is unbearable but not dangerous, the replies are about staying out of it as much as possible, finding one adult outside the family, and counting the months. The reader who wanted to escape from home got that conversation. A reader in a toxic household got replies about how to use the time before eighteen, and the thread on how to move out at eighteen is the practical sequel: money, documents, a first address.

If you are an adult: running away or leaving?

The adults in these stories are rarely stopped by logistics. They are stopped by the feeling that leaving would be a failure, or that the problem would follow them. The replies take the second worry seriously: a person who runs from a job, a town and a partner at once often finds the same exhaustion in the new place, because the exhaustion came with them. So the replies ask what, precisely, needs to end. Sometimes it is one relationship, and leaving it is not running away. Sometimes it is a life the person never chose, and the replies in family drama: choosing independence over bonds are about how to leave without disappearing.

What the replies encourage is leaving with a plan rather than vanishing: a date, a sum of money, one person who knows. Several authors describe how writing the plan down made the urge to run turn into a decision to move.

The questions the replies kept asking

Answering them in your own story makes the replies far more useful.

• Are you safe tonight? If not, nothing else on this page applies: call your local emergency number or a child or domestic abuse helpline.
• Who would you tell? One person who knows where you are changes everything about the risk.
• What has to end, exactly? A person, a place, a job, a role? The answer decides whether this is a departure or a flight.
• What do you need to leave properly? Age, money, papers, a first address. The replies are good at this part.

Writing yours

Say your age bracket, what the house or the life is like, and whether you are safe. Leave out names, the town and anything that would identify your family. You sign in with an existing account and only a generated pseudonym is shown; stories are reviewed before publication, and stories describing danger to a minor are read with that in mind.

Questions and answers

Will people tell me how to run away?

Not literally. The replies are about whether you are safe, who you can tell, and how to leave in a way that holds. That is what the authors of these stories needed, even when they asked for a method.

I am a minor and I am not safe. What now?

Tell an adult you trust today, or contact child protection or a child helpline in your country; they can be reached without a parent knowing. Running without a place to go is more dangerous than it looks.

Is wanting to run away normal?

Common, especially between fifteen and twenty-five, and in the years after a life has been built around someone else's expectations. Wanting it is not the same as having to do it.

Is this anonymous?

Yes. Your name and email are never stored and other members see only a pseudonym generated from your account.