It was by no means a casual drive to the airport. Everything looked the same as ever. Interstate 405 an unruly parking lot, the Seattle sky threatening to explode with moisture, Lake Washington a gray sheet of glass, but the mood inside the sky blue Toyota Camry was anything but casual. We were whizzing along in the HOV lane. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan belted out Sufi songs on the car stereo, my mother sat in the passenger seat murmuring verses from the Quran, my father at the wheel, expounded the psychology of drivers who changed lanes without signaling, and there I was in the back seat, fiddling with the straps of my REI pack, trying to remember why I was running away from home.
I guess I felt it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it. If I had chickened out and waited any longer, I might have given my parents fewer headaches, definitely less worries, but I probably wouldn't have forgiven myself for failing to disengage from a rusty vessel of thwarted hopes before it crashed and burned. At least that was how I saw my life six years ago. I was twenty-eight and miserable. Time kept on marching an arrogant parade, taunting me with the stench of a stale existence.
No more should haves or could haves, or my personal favorite, what if. I was tired of going through motions that had lost their meaning. Each day had been the same as the next. I would wake up to the screams of my alarm clock and have a little war with the snooze button before dragging myself into the shower. Dressed in earth-toned suits and brown leather pumps, with a whole-grained bagel tucked inside my purse, I would head to the office to play phone tag, answer emails, and multitask, only to come home, eat dinner, watch sitcoms, and fall asleep, ready to repeat the cycle the next day, the next and the next.
It all started out as a string of lackluster jobs after college. I worked in the tech sector hashing out competitive analysis and return on investment reports. For five soulless years that gave me no sense of accomplishment, no indication of what I was truly capable of beyond number crunching on Excel spreadsheets and mapping out pie charts.
What I really wanted was to escape from routine and find new rhythms in a world that would re-awaken my senses. I wanted to know the meaning of wonder and freshness, to regain the wide-eyed openness of a child again. I wanted to come to terms with a truer me, a more essential self that couldn't entirely be placed amid the bullet points of my resume. So I did what had to be done. I handed in my resignation letter, cashed in all my savings, and headed to Council Travel. They were having a sale on Europe. Paris sounded nice. I booked a one-way ticket.
Then I made a little announcement to friends and family.
"I am going abroad for a while. I don't know how long I will be gone for or exactly where I will be traveling to. But I promise to stay in touch with emails and let you know my whereabouts."
They were kind-hearted folks who cared for me and wanted me to be happy. So I wasn't taken to the nearest psychiatric ward. I was simply wished well and told to send plenty of postcards.