Leaving Home

I have lived in Madison County Illinois my whole life. Troy is a small, rural, Midwestern town of about 10,000 people, which is part of the reason why traveling has always interested me. However, leaving home was a lot harder than I anticipated. Throughout this whole process, my family was extremely supportive. As the first person in my family to finish college, I was nervous about explaining I wanted to take a gap year before getting my master’s to travel, especially since my family doesn’t really share the same passion for traveling as I do. I was afraid they wouldn’t understand, and I expected them to push back and try to convince me not to go. However,  they told me this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and were excited for me. As all parents, they were of course worried about my safety but knew Nick would be there to take care of me, which was an advantage of our long relationship before this journey. Without their unwavering support, I wouldn’t be doing this today, and there were many tears all around as we pulled Winnie out of the driveway the night we left my house. . .and then again in the morning when my family made an excuse to show up at Nick’s mom’s to say goodbye for a second time :).

The hardest goodbye for me was to my 17-year-old sister, Emilee. We are very close, and I felt like I was ditching her as she was going into to senior year and starting to visit/apply to colleges, a part of her life I didn’t want to miss. There were many times I considered staying for her, but I had to convince myself that she would be ok without me physically there. Although I may not have shown it, I was very worried about her resenting me for leaving, so I vowed to myself I would try to talk to her every day possible, and I counted on her to send me pictures of our cats every so often (I miss you Otis and Sully). I couldn’t help thinking back to when we were younger and spent so much time together playing Lego Harry Potter on the Wii trying to get 100% completion on every level or watching the newest Disney movie. And now, we both have our own lives and are rarely at home anyways. I cherish those memories and am sad to say I took them for granted until recently. In a way, I feel so lucky to have people in my life that makes saying goodbye so hard.

I was excited, scared, and sad to leave all at the same time. It was time for me to start this new chapter of my life with Nick and for us to live out this dream we’d had together. Nick had moved 500 miles away for college, so he didn’t struggle with the leave as much as I did, and he helped me get through it by being a little piece of home that came with me, something familiar. It was hard to grasp that for the next year, we wouldn’t really have a place to call “home,” besides Winnie. And that’s exactly what she has become to us: our home. After every backpacking trip or long day away, we so much look forward to getting back to Winnie just as you would your own house.

All I know, is I wanted to get out of the Midwest so badly at the beginning of this trip. However, as we were driving through the endless deserts of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, I found myself quickly missing the lush green forests and abundant rivers/lakes that I used to find so boring at home.