Certainly, after a long day at work or sitting through three classes for a good portion of the day, there are days I want nothing more than to go home, take a nice, long shower and climb into bed, pretending I don’t have to get up in the morning.

Most days, despite the beckoning from comfortable pajamas and Ben & Jerry’s, making that final turn around before my apartment complex is the most difficult thing I’ll do all week. It’s not that those three things didn’t sound appealing. It’s that I wanted to do them somewhere else — some place no one knew my name. I wanted to run. I wanted to drive and keep driving until I ended up in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles or Miami Beach.

When you move off campus for the first time, you suddenly become an adult. You have those adult phone calls to make, bills to pay, rent, roommates and an entire household to manage. Most of us, as second- and third-year college students, probably haven’t had to balance a checkbook or pay bills before. All of us will silently question why math classes never taught practical things like that.

We suddenly take on full-time jobs along with our classes so we can pay the bills and suddenly our weeks turn into a routine. Wake up, go to class, go to work, go to bed, maybe do some laundry. It repeats on a daily, weekly basis. The routines become so ingrained, changing them is a hassle. We’re stuck in a routine, in a small college town.

I hate being stuck.

Wanting to disappear to a place where no one knows my name, where I could get lost in a city of other people’s thoughts, find myself in the middle of someone else’s life.

It was a dream I had no obligations. I didn’t have to answer to my family. I didn’t have to answer to so many friends. I wondered, sometimes out loud, if I disappeared, who would miss me. I figured most would understand, assuming most people had the same dream: Abandon your responsibilities and leave the country. Change your name, become a new person.

But abandoning your responsibility isn’t the easiest thing to do. I had an obligation to show up to work every day, had an obligation to increase my debt by attending a university for a degree that might, one day, be a faded piece of paper hanging in a closet-sized living room.

But then there was the notion that I was obligated to myself.

Coming from a small family that lived in a small suburb of Metro Detroit, life always was boring. I took the bus to school, sat through six periods of class, took the bus home and did my homework. A series of actions that hasn’t changed, a part from a few added responsibilities. Pictures of foreign cities adorning my walls, my computer desktops, my school folders. The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty. At a young age, I wanted to go somewhere to see something beautiful.

I felt like I owed it to myself to get away from the monotony of a small suburb, from school work, from life. I was obligated to do what my parents had never done. I was obligated to travel and give myself a purpose. A purpose I seemed to lack in a small suburb. A purpose I sometimes feel I still lack in a college town where only 30 people know my name.

How was I supposed to know what my destiny would be if I couldn’t go off to find it?

On the days where I wonder if I was meant for something bigger, when I think about how little of the universe I know, looking at cheap plane tickets to random cities became one of my favorite hobbies.

Despite the fact college students have little to no money, something was holding me back from pressing the purchase button, packing a bag and disappearing.

It was the notion of small experiences.

It might be a small town, but it’s in this small town I became accustomed to working long hours and gained experience in the field of study I’m looking into. It’s here I will meet heartbreak and love and friends I will hold onto forever. The same people I’m stuck with are the ones I love to be around. From late night trips to Meijer to getting lost on streets I’ve never heard of, the small discoveries we make together are preparing us for a lifetime of amazing discovery together.

I’m not stuck. I’m letting my desire to disappear grow until the moment it bursts, and I’m holding onto people that will gladly purchase the cheap plane tickets with me and disappear into a world we’ve never been a part of.

Danyelle Morrow is a photographer at The State News and a english junior. Reach her at danyelle.morrow@statenews.com.