find me

1. bumps on the road

She was broken.
She was lost, she had no idea where she was going, no idea what she was gonna do with her life. The only thing she knew was that she was strong enough to face anything that would come her way. She had many secrets, too many for one person to bear and every secret held a heavy place on her conscience and on her heart.

She had friends who loved her and cared for her and she had a family. She wasn't alone. Yet she felt the loneliest person in the world.
He broke her. And whatever she did or didn't do, she couldn't fill that void inside of her. No matter how many mistakes he made or what he did to her, she still missed him. She knew it was messed up, she also knew it wasn't her fault.

But how do you cope with losing the one person in your life you thought would be by your side the rest of their life? How do you cope with being betrayed by the one person you trusted the most?

Once you're broken like that you can't be fixed, there will always be that void, that missing piece inside of you. You can't replace it or fill it. You can put your life back together and move on, but you'll always be missing something.

She knew all of this. She knew it all when she ran away and left everyone and everything she'd ever known.
All the people who ever loved her, all the places she grew up in, all the memories she treasured the most. She left all of that in the rear view mirror of a one way bus to New York City.

~

The world was presented to her on a silver platter, waiting only for her to take a bite. She had absolutely no plans, no path set out in front of her, and she liked that. For the first time in her life everything that came after that exact moment was a mystery. She took a chance sneaking out of the house that morning, she didn't know how long it would take her mom to figure out she had gone and come after her. She needed to move fast and undetected. Getting a place to stay for the night was gonna be the first step, money was the second one, all the rest was really up to fate.

Suddenly she felt a shiver coming down through her spine and she shuddered in her seat at the sensation: she was going to New York.

New fucking York.

On her own. And she didn't even know where she was going to sleep or what she was gonna do once the money she had from her savings ran out.

She trusted herself to be able to find a job pretty quickly. But what if she failed? She didn't know for how long she was going to be able to afford a place to stay without a job.

She needed help, she thought to herself.

But she didn't like that thought, it made her sound weak and dependent. If there was one thing she surely wasn't is weak. She wanted to do this on her own; she made it through the worst years of her life without no one even knowing those were the worst years of her life. A weight big as a house on her shoulders, and only her strength and her resilience to hold it. That was proof she didn't need anyone. All she needed was a way out of that town and this was it, no one was going to take that away from her. She deserved to be free, for once in her life and be able to make her own choices. She needed time to heal and rest and find out who she was. A fresh start.

The abrupt stop of the bus shook her from her deep thoughts and suddenly made her aware of the man who was sitting next to her.

He was all curled up on himself, seemingly asleep, his head resting on his chest, deep breaths moving his chest slowly up and down, a dark baseball cap covering his features.