Should I Stay Or should I go

I got in my car this morning to go to the grocery store but instead of doing what I had planned on doing I got on the interstate headed east to the ocean. I stopped at a rest stop 30 miles from home and sat in my car thinking about what I was actually doing. If I had thought ahead I wouldn't have worn the clothes I had on or put makeup on or even fixed my hair the way I did. I wonder what drove me to get on the interstate and start heading towards a place I had no business being today. I told my brother I would go to the store and get what we needed and I completely abandoned that plan for what? To be in control maybe, I guess what made me do it was the need to feel different, to feel free. There was a time in my life when I would have cut myself or taken something that made me feel differently than I did.
 I tell myself I'm not the same and I guess I'm not but at the same time I am in the same place I was a few years ago just smarter. Stronger I guess. People tell me I'm so much better off, so much stronger and so different than who I used to be. But when I look in the mirror I sometimes still see the hurt little girl who hated herself so much that she did everything she could to escape her own mind. Maybe I am different, better, stronger. But a part of me is still the same and maybe always will be. The part of me that grasps for something different than what's right in front of me, something better than what I have now. I can see I've come a long way. I can look in the mirror and see someone who's tried and true, different than who they used to be. Someone who chose to do something different. But still, some days that stray part of myself gets a hold of who I'm trying to be and it tries to run away with me. I guess getting in my car to go to the grocery store and ending up on the interstate somewhere else is better than hurting myself, better than hating myself. Some days I feel like I'm doing so good and then the next I feel like I'm falling down the stairs backward with a blindfold on.
 In my mind, I feel like I'm always playing hide and seek looking for who I'm trying to be and sometimes finding a glimpse of her only to have her slip away again. Who I used to be and who I'm trying to be now seem to be playing tug of war. I know who'll win in the end but sometimes I think it would be easier to go back to who I used to be.
 I've never fallen off the horse and not gotten back on. I always get back up and figure it out but I'm not afraid of the ground floor. I'm afraid of staying there. I'm afraid if I always stop myself from doing the irrational I'll stay in this cycle of holding myself back and I'll stay on the ground floor forever never learning my lesson. Maybe the lesson today wasn't to get all the way to the ocean, because once I was there what would I have to do but turn around and be back in the same place I was before I left. Maybe the lesson today was to sit here at this rest stop and write this. I don't really know.
 I wonder how many times I'll stop myself from doing what I really want because I feel like I owe someone something. In reality, I do owe people things. I would have owed my parents an explanation as to why on the way to the grocery store I ended up on the road to the beach, with no plan and no idea as to what I was doing not even telling anyone that I left.
 I feel like that's how I've been living my life these days though. I have no clue what I'm doing.
 I'm constantly struggling with who I used to be and who I want to be. Some days who I am hates who I've been and some days I'm proud of who I used to be. Then there are days like to today when I wonder who I'm truly trying to be. Where I'm trying to get with this. What am I trying to accomplish here? Where do I end up? When I think of the answers to those questions I think it's certainly not here. This is not who I aim to be. This isn't what I wanted.
 When I think of that I wonder how many times I'm going to stop myself from snapping. I think maybe one day I'll let myself be irrational. I'll let myself learn the hard way even though I know better. Can I even do that? Do I know how to do the stupid things even when I know better? I've done things I knew were bad for me over and over because they helped me get someplace else, helped me not feel the way I did in that moment. But in the moment after that... Well, I don't know. I'm alive so maybe it wasn't all that bad. I do know that I won't find whatever it is I'm looking for until I find some kind of balance in myself. Until I learn when to stay and when to go. In my mind, I've never had very much moderation when it comes to things that were "good" or "bad" but I'm sure depending on who you ask some people would tell you I'm the most level headed person they know. Maybe I'm just good at picking my battles with myself and bad at picking friends who actually want to know me for me.
 But one day I won't hold myself home anymore. I won't be able to control my trigger finger, I won't stop myself from getting on the interstate and leaving. Out of all the things I don't know for sure I know that I can't stay here on the ground floor forever. Knowing what I know now about myself I know without a doubt I won't be able to control my urge to leave one day and then I just won't be able to make myself stay.