Everything is ending (except not really)

It has only just occurred to me, as I sat on the edge of a motel bed in Anaheim and tried not to cry as I finished reading aloud the book we started a long time ago and have been reading on this trip, that my road trip is ending. I've been so wrapped up in excitement at returning home that I have left myself little time to contemplate that I am leaving this group adventure and carving out my own solo. On Thursday night, I will sleep in a bed that is (mostly) permanently mine. I'm going to wake up, for the first time in two months, someplace incredibly familiar and walk down streets I've known for the last ten years of my life.
This weird pang of sadness has taken me by surprise even though it shouldn't have. I hugged Rachel, tightly, before she climbed into bed and felt my throat tighten. I didn't want to let go but she was tired and I had blogs to write and sleep to evade. I'm leaving. Even writing it, the words sink in slowly and they hurt a little.
When I left home in May, I felt like I had something conceivable to come back to and it's a little fractured now but I'm clinging to my resolve. I feel a little torn but I made my choices and I'm sticking to them. I'm pretty certain that, either way, I'm going to feel a pull towards the other option but I feel ready to go home so home I will go.
Not to the Grand Canyon or Lake Powell in Utah. Not to Yellowstone or Mount Rushmore. My adventures this month will be on a different scale than the last two. Let us hope I don't regret taking myself out of the road trip and that my actions are driven by something more than hopeless longing.
I feel like Tara Finke from The Piper's Son in that way, not wanting my life to be spent in a perpetual state of longing--either for home or travel--and yet I'm starting to see longing as inevitable. I will miss my mom and sisters. I'll miss reading to them and making them laugh and pissing them off and drinking tea in a different coffee shop every day. But I've missed home, too, missed my dad and my cat and my friends and reliable wifi and... you. I've missed you. Is this what my life will be from now on, with my family moving nine hours away? Missing someone or everyone at all times, no matter where I am or who I'm with?
I guess I'll have to get used to it. Either that or take up drug abuse but I'm leaning towards the former.

travelling thoughts

There's something completely unique about travelling and maybe that is a super obvious statement but I feel it needs to be stated nonetheless. I access places in a completely different way when I don't live there, and the foreign layouts and places are food for endless wonder and comparison.

I've been to quite a few different places in the past three and a half weeks and I have pretty much found something to love about all of them, whether it is a desolate piece of beach or a neat hispter-y coffeeshop. Libraries are usually my favourite spot; I love it when they have particular rooms just for the use of teens. (I also love the clicking keyboards of library computers that give me a soundtrack as I type.)

Travelling brings so much contrast to my life. I can't help but comparing these places to home and picturing myself living here. There are so many amazing little towns on this continent that are full of really cool people and it seems unfortuante that I won't get to see them all. In part, it makes me glad to be away from White Rock, exploring somewhere new. I want to say I miss it and I guess there's some parts that I do but mostly I'm happy to be immersed in these new places--not knowing every street and its name, not having any memories attached to the buildings before my eyes. Like a blank slate, starting fresh in every new city.

I'm getting used to it, the wanderlove, as Kirsten Hubbard put it. The more I see, the more I realize how much there is to fall in love with. Hopefully, I keep falling.

why I like buses

Whenever I hear people complain about how much they hate buses, I can be found making myself invisible on the fringes, trying to keep my mouth shut. You see, it's not exactly easy to convince people of the merits of public transit.

But the merits exist.

Mostly what I like about buses is that for however long, all the passengers are going the same place. Ever since I was younger, whenever travelling in cars, I find myself staring at drivers in other cars, wondering where they're going, what their lives are like, if they're late or on any kind of schedule. On a bus, it's like that only amplified. Everyone is confined to a certain place and people get on and off as they please. You could argue that a temporary camaraderie is created, as everyone inhales the same scents of too strong perfume and body odor and tries to ignore the same crazy people.

Then you get off the bus and the sense of unity disappears quietly, like maybe it never existed at all. And hey, maybe it didn't.