this road trip saved me

One week ago, I would have told you I was at the end of the line. That I had failed at the simple task assigned me and nothing lay on the other side of that. But then some old friends flew from their coast to mine to see me, and we got in my truck and drove.

We drove through forests, lush and choked with green. Over mountains, noble and craggy and inlaid with snow. Across deserts with sweeping red rock hollowed by the wind and a lazy shallow river to float in. Through tiny towns frozen in time with classic bikers and sunspotted locals, and through cities, with blocks full of books and steaming coffee and a cigarette smoked on wet pavement.

We drove through all these places without any job except to stay up like hyenas long past dark, whispering sadnesses under the stars or jostling each other like a litter of puppies. We shared the same snacks and the same air and the same jokes from Central California all the way to the tip of Washington, all the way to an island with land my mom walked barefoot when she married the man who would become my father. Land with a beautiful, laughing grandmother and a mug with my childhood face and acres of tenderly minded gardens that give way to the sea.

I know, as I sit here with bare feet and a light chest, in less than a week I will be back to real life. Back to appointments, a sweet family but no friends, my isolation from those my age a constant stinging reminder. But I hope I can find a way to make it better. I hope I can remember the trip I took the summer I was eighteen, when I laughed and ran and not once felt like a liability.