the time warps of travel

I woke up in my room in Boulder yesterday, slightly alarmed and confused. I laid there, staring at my window, for at least 15 minutes, trying to register where in my life I was again.

After staying up all night, fighting to hold on to something I didn't want to leave again, I got in a car at 5 am and arrived at the airport at about 6 am. We flew to Nashville, I passed out on the chairs (thank god for no arm rests!), we flew to Kansas City, I passed out on Lindsays shoulder on the plane. We got on a highly clastrophobic shuttle, couldn't pass out there. We get to Lindsays car, I hop in back, and immediately construct a bed-like structure out of my snowboard and backpack. I pass out again.

I wake up to Lindsay asking her dad why we're still in Missouri. It has now been at least a half hour. We went the wrong way. Now we're backtracking...and I'm passing out again. I wake up every 20 minutes or so to find, ooh, more Kansas.

While I'm in the car, everything feels ok. Because you aren't really anywhere. It's like this safe little purgatory of constant movement, where you left doesn't really feel gone yet, and where you're going still hasn't really registered. So I drift in and out of sleep, in and out of daydreams, and in and out of extremely painful positioning against my board and bag.

We dance in and out of skeezy little gas stations and rest stops. We take down sodas, and Red Bulls, and cookies and gummy worms. Then I curl up in the back again, feeling sick and tired and sick and tired of Kansas.

We arrive in Boulder at 12am Colorado time, 2 am east coast time. I mumble to my roommate that I will talk to her tomorow when I am slightly more coherent.

This is when I wake up, confused and flustered. My brain tries to register where it is, home? No. School? No. Abroad? No. When did I leave? What time is it? How much time has passed since I was on my couch, begging time to slow down? It hasn't, thats for sure. Much more of it has passed than even makes sense to me at the moment. Finally it all settles in, and I realize I am in my other life again. My Boulder life.

The home life registered much quicker than I had imagined it would. No stuttering, no confusion, and no feelings of being misplaced. Just bam, home, done. This is my home, this is my family, these are my friends, it all makes sense. That is the most comforting feeling in the world. To know, as much as I may come and go, and for however long it my be, home is home is home. It's registered, it's mine. And I love it.