We got back some moments ago, though I needed time to let everything settle. That necessary space where your body catches up to what your brain is still trying to process.
A tiny town I’d never heard of in Arkansas.
Winding mountain roads where I white-knuckled the backseat, trusting someone else to navigate those impossible curves. Back road Mamba rides where I gave up control completely and let the world streak past. I drove plenty on this trip, just not those parts. Sometimes staying alive means knowing when to let someone else take the wheel.
Being alive is disorienting as hell, especially when you never thought you'd make it past twenty-seven.
Not in some dramatic way I talked about, just a quiet certainty I carried. No plans past that age, no future self I could picture because I genuinely didn't believe one would exist. And here I am, celebrating another birthday on the solstice like the universe decided to make a point about new beginnings.
We were high in the sky. The stars were brilliant. Not the watered-down way we call things brilliant, but actually brilliant. Light that traveled for years just to hit your eyes right then. The kind that makes you stop running through your mental to-do list and just, look up.
We saw art. We let ourselves feel things we'd been too busy or scared or functional to acknowledge. You know those feelings that live somewhere in your ribs but you keep them locked down? Those. Strangers made us cry in the best possible way. The kind that cracks something open you didn't realize needed cracking.
I remembered how small we are and how much we can still matter to each other. One real moment of connection can rewire your whole nervous system. Kindness from a stranger can feel like proof that maybe the world isn't as brutal as your brain keeps insisting.
Friends who couldn't make it were there anyway. In the jokes, the laughter, those moments where I caught myself thinking "god, they would've loved this."
I got gifts you can't buy. Not things you wrap or ship, but the kind that live in your chest and change how you walk through the world.
Writing about it is harder than I expected because it was so much feeling. The kind I'm usually too self-conscious to admit to in regular life. The big, vulnerable stuff that feels like confessing we're all just soft creatures who need connection and beauty and reminders of why we're still here.
Nature is quite possibly the best thing that exists. That's it.
There's something about the solstice. The longest night…then the light starts coming back. Endings and beginnings in the same breath. Felt right to hit another year at that exact pivot point, like the universe saying "you made it through, now let's start again." That in-between space where dark meets light, death meets rebirth, the old story meets whatever comes next.
Thank you to everyone who made this trip what it was. Would've been entirely different without you. And to past me, the one who couldn't see past twenty-seven~ we made it, AGAIN.
And it's stranger and better than we imagined.
So: how are you actually doing? When's the last time you let yourself feel something big? Looked at the stars? I'm asking because we're supposed to check in on each other~that's the whole point. Drop a comment or don't, but either way, take a breath.
Someone out here is rooting for you. We're all trying to make it to our own turning points, and that matters.
I love you all,
AP