The Open Road

This weekend I head off to San Francisco to visit a friend I've known for nearly 12 years. I'm very very grateful for the friendship I have. We've helped each other through many things, and despite the distance and sometimes even the amount of times when we don't speak, we're always close. There's no hard feelings or blaming when one contacts the other after a long time in between not speaking. Just pure joy at having a friend you know you can call and just...be. I go perhaps once a year (and I really should make it more often) and it's always such fun when I go! It's truly a life long friendship that I know not every one has in this life.

When I go to visit her, I drive. It's a long way from my house to San Francisco, but I really enjoy it. I have to wake up really early--which, I admit, I hate--but when I cross over a mountain pass into the flat lands of Bakersfield (the land of cows and cow poop. Seriously. Just miles and miles of cows and poop. Welcome to California folks!) the sun will just be rising and I see a desert valley stretched before me bordered by brown mountains. Bakersfield is really just shades of brown with patches of green. I stop at the same gas stations that I stopped at as a kid when my mom took me up the redwoods, and eat at the same diner. I see the same mountains and hills and when I hit Gilroy I always stop and buy local fruit and garlic from the stands on the side of the road. Because it's tradition. Because when I do it, I feel like I'm more myself.

I'm alone.

If you don't live in the US you might not understand the appeal of a road trip. But for me, to be alone in a car as I drive across the expanse of California alone with my thoughts and the radio...I love it. It's a great way to get some perspective and as I drive I feel my concerns and worries go away. I can relax and just look at the ribbon of cracked gray road I drive on. I can use the time to just be myself in the car and listen to my thoughts and be. I think that's why I like traveling so much. I love rediscovering myself. But driving up to San Francisco is different.

Rather than thinking about where I'm going, I think about where I've been. I remember the road well, I remember who I was and how old I was when I was on the road. I remember the feelings and even thoughts I had. I go backwards. But it helps me to see who I was and how far I've come, and compare who I am now. I also feel very free and independent when I drive alone on such a long trip like this. I feel my self confidence grow in my ability to travel by myself, take care of myself, trust myself to take the right roads. It's a much needed break from my life back home.

My fondest memories when I take this trip (Besides seeing the flat lands of Bakersfield) is the twisting road that snakes through Gilroy. The lush green hills and mountains are right against the road, tall and filled with trees and bushes that cling to craggy rock and soft soil. It should look scary and intimidating with how tall they tower above you and press around you, but it isn't. They feel friendly. You feel safe rather than scared. I've been through the pass many times and it still makes me say "WOOOOW!" every time.

I love the open road.

I need this trip. I need it to reflect on my life and to review my past. This trip is long over due, and when I get out of the car, it'll be to step into the arms of an amazing friend who'll be holding a glass of wine out for me. Because that's how my friend rolls. Good thing I'm bringing some bottles of wine in return!

Shedding Skin

    I didn't grow up in a normal home--I think a lot of people don't. But I grew up very unconventionally because my dad was a motorcycle riding, Santa look alike, hippie. He had me grow up in a tepee in the mountains with trees for friends, a boat where our table became our bed, and a quaint small home by the ocean that he lovingly grew wild flowers around. All of these places hold very definable memories for me and my life. I look at back on them and remember them with almost perfect clarity. Perhaps not every day of my life, but many life lessons and even inconsequential things like watching him destroy a colony of ants in the wildflowers. I was devastated because I was watching them and found it fascinating to watch the queen lay eggs. Sure, they would soon grow and enter our home and eat my sugary snacks, but it was so interesting to watch how nature worked! Then it was destroyed by his shovel right before my eyes. 

     But the thing is, even when I look back on these moments in my memory I remember them because at the time that the events were happening I said to myself "you need to remember this moment and this feeling right now." I have always looked towards the future impatiently. I wanted to grow up. Hell, I FELT grown up at a young age. I felt too mature for my age. As a teen I didn't understand other teenagers who didn't question everything, who did stupid drama things and had boyfriends only to break up two weeks later. Why call them a boyfriend? Why have one at all? The friends I made in high school were unhealthy in a lot of ways...but I also learned from those bad experiences and to be fair, they DID have brains in their heads and were very serious to a degree about life--at the age of 16 we opened our own legitimate business and ran it for three years (legally owned the name, paid taxes, everything.).

     So here's my point. I've always wanted to grow up, or be in the future. I enjoy being in the present for sure, and I don't regret things in my past or choices I've made. But right now....right NOW I'm on edge. I'm losing it a little. I don't regret things I did in the past.....but I'm terrified of the present. I'm terrified of the me I am now. I feel like I'm on a high wire above a very large canyon and one small step, one gust of wind, is going to blow me away into oblivion and I will have failed without even getting started. Maybe this is all the backlash of me turning 29. Maybe its my fears creeping in saying "you should be farther a long in life. What the hell are you doing?" I do. I feel like I'm failing right now.

     But also I feel this....ripple. This change. All my fears that were at the back of my mind are now bubbling forth to the front, and from it I feel the desperate need to CHANGE. Like....completely change ME. I want to be different. I want to act different, I want to be so different my friends don't recognize me. Along with the fears--like that suddenly I'm too old to achieve my dreams like living in Japan or not making it as a writer--is a writhing, seething, screaming urge to transform.

    This isn't you!  

     That's what my inner me is saying. Who you are right now, that's not you. This present me needs to die. I need to be different. It's terrifying. I've never wanted or felt the need to change so dramatically. But I want to. I want to change so bad, and I don't think there's a way to stop it. But it's a good change, it really is. If I let it. But first....first I think I need to conquer my fears. I have a lot of them. I think the biggest one is disappointing people and not doing things I want to because they seem crazy or too far fetched. I want to stop thinking that way. I want to go for the gold. I want to hold my head high and say "So what? You got a problem with it? Too bad!" 

     This need to change....I've always had little bits of change I want to do, that I go through--everyone does. I want to change so badly that my skin feels itchy and I want to rip it all off. I've never had this experience...this drive, before I don't know what to do with it or why its happening. Just that it IS happening and I need...no HAVE to do it. I don't know what I'll look like on the other side. I don't know who I'll be. That scares me. But what scares me more is  the thought of being who I am right now, forever. This is NOT who I want to be. This is not who I'm meant to be.

I need to shed this skin.