School Days: Travel Studies

Travel Studies: Wrong Track

via travelin oma's school days

Homework: Do any or all or be inspired.

~Have you ever been lost? How did you get found? Write about a travel experience (or a life experience) where you needed help finding your way back. Prompt: "I didn't realize I was lost until______."

~Remember a time you felt a connection to a stranger in a strange place. Start a paragraph with this sentence: "I never found out his name, but I won't forget how__________."

~Read a journal entry you wrote a few years ago. Let your heart visit that place and time, remember what you learned, and realize how far you've come since then.

I didn't realize, at least not completely, that I really was lost until that night. Attempting denial so I could pretend to be in control of my world, totally with it, hip, happenin'. Looking for love (or validation or purpose or contentment) in all the wrong places, as the song goes. Then he showed up. So much planning and effort on his part for a special evening, though we were practically strangers. Alas, his best laid plans unravelled at every turn. Not fault of his own, I knew that. I found a certain charm, and felt a sense of pride, at his flustered words and frustrated attempts at a night on the town. I did my best to help move the evening along in such a way he wouldn't feel like and absolute fool. Let's face it, he just wasn't all that smooth. It was a little funny though. And sweet.

It was easy with him. Talking, sitting, driving that night from one end of town to the other. Just being. I suddenly didn't have to be more this way or less that way, or think this thought or say that or avoid saying something else. I didn't have to try harder or pretend more. Perhaps because I secretly sensed he was nearly putty in my hands, perhaps because he was just that genuine. He wasn't strutting about or fanning his feathers. He was just there. With me. Hanging on my every word. Treating me like he thought I was all that and a bucket of chicken. Treating me as a gentleman should, though completely without airs.

I knew by the end of that night that he loved me. I knew it before he knew it. No longer coasting restlessly. No longer wandering aimlessly through empty relationship after pompous fool after weak-minded oaf after spoiled dope. No longer bouncing from superficial to silly to aimless. No longer lost in the dark hallways of anxiety and self doubt. No longer hesitant or afraid to be found, to be loved. Just as I was. I knew it that night. I didn't want to know it--where would be the drama and thrills if I had the answer? But still, I knew it. Safety. Warmth. Kindness. Just love. Found. And now he's stuck with me.