10 years

After that first road trip I took by myself, I always knew that I would take another one. I ached too much for the beauty of the winding, blank road, the miles stretched out before me, the feeling of wind skirting through the cracks in the window and blowing loose curls away from my face. I missed the feeling that I was at once a fluttering nobody in a sprawling universe and also entirely grounded and whole with myself. 

And so here I was—right back in San Francisco, where I started my first road trip. Except now, I didn’t sit in contemplative solitude. She sat next to me, her eyes closed momentarily as she leaned back into the seat, the sunlight filtering through her dark eyelashes, her lips curved up in a slight smile. 

We met in a records store in Portland, Oregon, where is where I ended up, after my tumultuous young adult years. She reached for the same Simon and Garfunkel vinyl that I did; we struck up a conversation that lasted hours. She scribbled her phone number into the palm of my hand with an inquisitive smile. She moved into my apartment by the end of the winter. 

In the end, I had always wanted to come to a home. It was fun to wander and go around, seeing new people and pushing myself to my limits, but in the end, I wanted somewhere to return to. 

But what I’d learned was that the home that I started out of didn’t have to be my home forever. I knew, somewhere along my first road trip, that I would never be able to again fit into the life I had fit into earlier. I couldn’t slip my old life back on like a cocoon. 

I could make my new home where I wanted to; I knew I was capable of holding my own in this vast country. As the years went on, through the marches and chants that I saw over TV and in the cities I went to, slowly, I was able to love who I wanted to; to kiss a girl in a bar and not feel an overwhelming, shaking guilt the morning after. 

In the end, I wanted an escape; I wanted to leave my old home and my old life. And so I made a new home for myself; I became a new person, and now, on this second road trip with her, I felt once again like I was starting anew.