The Vagabond Journal: 09-17-2019.

I’m home again.

Hey.

Is there such thing as a beginning to a story? It seems like it just starts wherever you start telling it.

I don’t feel too good.

Looks like the last time I wrote in this was a month ago. Fortunately, it was about leaving Seattle, so I don’t need to go into too much detail.

I left.

It wasn’t easy, or how I planned it. You can read about it in more detail in my physical journal, but the gist is that I was planning on driving down the West Coast, meeting ***** in LA, then heading across the southwest through El Paso, Austin, and finally, Houston.

About 20 minutes down I-5, heading south from Seattle, the Expedition broke down. I spent the next week finding a scrapper to come and take it. Everything I saved up over the last year was given away to Goodwill, except for my clothes and backpack. No stove, no cookware, no storage bins perfectly measured. Just an empty car waiting to be scrapped. And me, with Blue Jeans, on a plane back to Houston.

The whole experience, the stress of being stuck and the feelings of wanting to move on to the next phase of my life kind of prevented me from feeling anything else. I just needed to take it all in one piece at a time.

But now I’m at Dad’s; I’m safe, and I have food. Blue Jeans is at Mom’s with *******.

I kind of wasted today, just did a few errands and fucked around the rest of the time. Had work I needed to do. Yesterday I got my work done so early that I felt like I had more time than I knew what to do with. So there was really no excuse today.

I feel a little guilty about it. But that’s not really why I feel bad.

I guess the weight of what happened is sinking in. Of leaving that car behind. My home. I’m never going to fall asleep in that car again, or travel to a new city. It’s gone. It’s gone.

But more than that, that part of my life is gone. Even if I go straight from that to staying out of another car, that would take months. Months of planning again, of saving up, of buying new things.

I miss it so much.

I used to say, in Seattle, that I missed Texas everyday. Now I worry that I’m going to miss the road everyday.

The tow truck driver who moved my car off of the freeway was from Ethiopa. We talked for a while about what it felt like to have a foot in two worlds. For him, it was his family in Seattle and his family in his home country. For me, it was the road and Austin. I can’t have one without giving up the other. They are physically at odds with one another.

I’ve been thinking a bit about when I was happiest, to try and return to that. Two points stick out in my mind.

The first was last year, in Austin, when I first started talking to *****. Listening to her music, an artist from the elusive California, and me, the misfit from the interminable East Texas. Laying in the grass at Zilker Park, with nothing and nobody, no real job yet, no clear idea of what I wanted to do, only writing for a month. Just laying in the sun until I burned because I couldn’t stay in my car, listening to music and watching college kids play with their dogs. Feeling like I’d never been further from home.

That was nothing short of a miracle.

The second happiest point of my life, as I remember it, was this Spring. After I finally got the car working and moved to Austin with Blue Jeans. It was extremely stressful in the beginning, but once her and I finally figured everything out and started going for walks around the city, it was amazing. Not perfect, but amazing. I remember listening to The Rainbow by Talk Talk, which I’m listening to right now, and contemplating the meaning of my life. I was free, I had money, and I’d been to California. So what now?

Part of it is that the last year has been the most incredible of my life, more incredible than I ever thought any part of my life ever would be. And now it’s coming to an end. It has ended. And I’m worried that whatever is beginning can never match up. I’m worried that I won’t match up.

Might come back to this in a bit. Freaking myself out.