Never Say Goodbye to Your Myth

Nothing worth mentioning happens on a Wednesday afternoon.

This particular Wednesday was no exception. Summer has finally loosened its heated grip allowing for warm tender air to spread its way across the city.

It was the last Wednesday of that particular summer and it felt especially idle. A busy everyday life wasn’t going to start for a few more days.

A yellow taxi cab was making its way through the braided strands of traffic on a freeway. It was heading to the airport with only one passenger in the back seat, a girl of 17.

The girl was gently leaning onto the window, her head slightly tilted, tawny hair cascading over her shoulders. Her hazel eyes looking intently into the distance.

To the occasional travelers in the passing cars, she was just a girl enjoying the scenery changes. The girl who was squinting into the jumbled distance of the streets and buildings as if trying to find familiar features of the places she visited just the night before.

The only thing that could give her away was the fact that her answers to the rare questions coming from the driver’s seat were absent minded and erratic…

If anyone bothered to pay a little closer attention they would know that there wasn’t even a flicker of interest in the girl’s eyes…

…she was immune to the world.

She belonged to the moment.

Willingly. Wholly. Undeniably.

Her mind was far away trying to hold on to the moments of the last two weeks that she spent under the Mediterranean sun. Moments that were so real and vivid in her mind’s eyes.

Moments when she cracked herself open letting her ‘magic’ reveal itself to the complete strangers.

Moments when she felt understood and at peace, knowing that who she is, is enough.

These moments were like precious little jewels to her and she intended to keep them close to her heart, carefully tucked away from the eyes of everyone else.

She knew these moments were going to become her lifeline in times when the world around her falls apart. She knew it was just a matter of time till it happens.

There were tears shimmering in the corners of her hazel eyes. These weren’t the tears of pain or a broken heart. No, she cried those tears a while back and the new portion of that wasn’t due for a couple more years.

These were tears of a girl who just traded a big chunk of her soul for the right to know who she is in this life.

These were tears of a girl who will have to learn that silence can speak louder than words. And she will have to learn it the hard way.

These were tears of knowing that some invisible force was set in motion and she has no power to stop it now.

These tears were infused by the feeling of warmth even though deep inside she knew it will be more than a decade before she steps foot on the north shore by the sea.

As if she must first earn the right to come back to the place where it all began…

…but back then, on that idle Wednesday afternoon, she didn’t know any of that.

Just like she didn’t know that life has prepared a serious set of tests and challenges for her.

She didn’t know that she will have to fall too many times to count before she would get back up again.

She didn’t know that the only thing that was going to get her through was a belief that one day she will write a story about.

That same belief would set her on a journey a decade-long in an unfamiliar country looking for answers that have always been inside her.

But for now, the taxi cab is rushing her further and further away from the city where the air is warm and tender, closer and closer to the reality of life that she is about to experience, faster and faster down the highway of her destiny.

She will never speak about the idle Wednesday afternoon of that particular summer, but she won’t forget it either…

…after all how do you say goodbye to a myth that hasn’t even begun?