Pause for the Cause

October 1st, 2015

I volunteered to do this.
When your family needs help, you do everything you can. I’m just wandering around the country, it’s not like I have a job I need to take time off from.

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I was in Davenport, IA and just had a flat tire. During my walk of shame I decided to call my mom to check in and pass the time. We talked about anything and everything, including that my grandma in Texas was sick, very sick. My mom was toying with the idea of going down (from Michigan) to live and help for as long as she needed. I volunteered to live in Detroit to take care of things while she was gone. The longest I’d ever volunteered before was for a full day of work at a Habitat for Humanity Build.

Thinking nothing of the conversation, I moved on and continued my trip. But a week later, another check in call, and I found that I would indeed be putting on the brakes and living in a house sooner than I had anticipated, but for how long, I would never know until it was all over.

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As I wrapped up my travels with a few states and friends to match, I slowly came to terms that the most important thing about plans, is that nothing ever goes according to plan. The best way to describe it was that I had been high on life for the past 2 months. The kind of high that I had experienced once before when I studied abroad for a semester. A high that I had been chasing since, and will have to chase again. The one important part to know about being high, is that eventually, you have to come down, back to reality.

This reality was one that I was not fully prepared for, mentally. Normally, when making abrupt life changes I knew what I was getting myself into, when I would be where, what I would be doing, and a basic daily routine figured out so that I could hit the ground running. Here, I knew nothing. You’d think that after two months of learning to go with the flow I would have fared better, but that’s not the case.

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So now, I’m in Detroit. It’s been some time since I wrote my last blog post, and for all that that have been following this far, I apologize. I didn’t mean to leave you out, wondering. Originally this was supposed to be a travel and adventure story, but now, it’s my life story. It probably won’t be nearly as exciting, or glamorous, but it is what has been happening, and I feel like sharing it will help me through it.