I get nervous. I worry. If it’s something new and I don’t know how to do it, I’m afraid of making a mistake. I don’t like making mistakes. Am I going to make the train on time? Is this the right train going the right way? Which station did they tell me to change trains at?
If I miss my station change, I can just turn around and go
back. How bad would it be if I miss the train? The world won’t end, I’ll just
take the next train. No one is depending
on me, there is only me to worry about, I’m fine, I’m a smart woman, I’ll be
fine.
But it’s not just trains- I like to feel in control. I like
to know what I am doing. I like to know what comes next. And right now, I have
no idea what happens after the next 2 weeks. Where will I spend the summer?
Will I still fit into my life at the end of it? Will I want to? Will my life
want me back? What do I want my life to be, anyway? How do I want to live and
be in the world?
Yep, I am so out of my comfort zone. And yet, somehow, it
feels good and right, even in the midst of the scary stuff. But anyway, I’m on
the right train- I boarded at platform 9 ¾, so I am sure to end up somewhere
magical, and I have nothing to do for the next 8 hours but gaze out the window
and watch the world go by.
So I relax and eat the lunch I bought at King’s Cross
station- a proper Cornish meat pie, an organic banana and some kind of
jam-filled cake thing which turned out to be flaky and delicious. I wander down
to the catering car and buy a very expensive but pretty decent coffee. I wander
back to my seat and watch my fellow travelers drink beer and eat crisps, work
on their computers- Everyone has a mobile phone they are playing with- I listen to the chatter of a family with two
little girls on their way to a holiday in a self-catering caravan at the beach.
I smile and sympathize with a pair of teachers herding a gaggle of giggling school
girls home from a class trip in London.
I chat with my seatmate, a young American woman who has been
attending school in Scotland, and she tells me about her upcoming job at St
Andrews University, and the visit she just had with her family, who were here
for her graduation. And then she returns to her book and I return to gazing out
the window.
The farther we get from London the less people there are on the
train, so I move across the aisle to a pair of empty seats, and get
comfortable. The train sneaks into the back door of each city we pass through,
and I see stone walls and hanging laundry and castles and tidy cottages and
then we are back in the countryside and there are misty green fields, lots of
sheep, and an abundance of wild flowers.
I doze a bit, and I reflect on the fact that although I am
traveling out of my comfort zone in a foreign country, I am very comfortable
sitting in a seat with someone else’s name on the card. I congratulate myself
for making my train change despite the fact that no one on the train from the
airport was able to help me. I am quite pleased that I insisted a complete and
reluctant stranger take my picture in the station, and that I unpacked and repacked
my backpack in the middle of King’s Cross to get my other shoes.
I’m wondering who saw me do all these things, and what they
might think of this tall Canadian with her backpack spread open across the
middle of the station. But at least I’m
doing them anyway. Packing up and heading off to Europe for the summer with a
very vague plan to make a plan. Making my own decisions and living up to my own
expectations.
Seems like I have been away from home a long time now, not
less than 24 hours. I’m in a different country, different continent, and
different headspace.
I wonder what it would be like to spend the summer on the
train?
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