Every noise I make echoes off the empty walls in this now foreign place that was once my beloved bedroom. Four things hang in my closet, and the last of the bags and boxes wait to be loaded into my car (help?) I guess it’s really over. After five wonderful years, my apartment, roommate, and I are separating.
It feels like a divorce, the end of an era. Was this movie yours or mine? You can keep the cheese grater, I’ll take the curtains. It all sounds silly when we stop and listen to ourselves. We have grown up together in this apartment, my roommate and I, and now we couldn’t be headed down more divergent paths. Hers to stability and mine to the unmapped, open road. An incredible cross country road-trip lies between my painful departure from this apartment and my somewhat vague future. I should at least be excited for the trip.
The sight of my packed bag, roadmap, and notebook should awaken the familiar and endlessly sought after rush of excitement that travel usually brings to me. But it is different this time. I don’t just have one bag packed, they are all packed. When I return “home” I cannot simply place everything neatly back into its designated area and settle back into life. “Home” will no longer be the old apartment with the leaky faucet and the beautiful mountain views that I so adore. Instead, my life will hang somewhere between a storage unit and my parent’s garage. Sigh. The power of this travel bug never ceases to amaze me. It has slowly driven me out of my cubicle, out of my apartment, and out of my life as I thought I knew it.
But I am forging my own path. It may not be the one anyone, including me, expected it to be, but it is my path. It will be filled with happy times and sad times, overworked and underworked times, and hopefully sprinkled with lots of travel. I will make it to my destination, but I am stopping to smell the roses, and the tulips, and the daisies, and…anyway, I am going to enjoy this journey that is my life.
Au revoir, my sad and empty room. The open road is calling me, so I’m answering. Wish me luck…
