Sojourn - Oahu, Hawaii — The Positively Wandering Travel Diaries ©

O’ahu

As I sat in the airport, in the city where I’d spent eighteen years of my life, the nerves and anxiety of starting a new life manifested themselves into a physical response. My head had begun to throb in my right temple, my belly felt full of the flutters of anticipation, and my muscles trembled with the unknown to come. I felt as if I was already in the air, hovering out of the door of a small plane before freefalling toward the Earth.

Sitting here, I am looking down at thousands of miles of moments and memories, and it is the most intense feeling of my life, somehow more extraordinary and exhilarating than a real freefall in my beloved skydiving journey.

Then I begin to wonder, who are all these people around me? Are they going home to a new place? Is it a work trip, a vacation, a quick visit? “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other,” Charles Dickens, from A Tale of Two Cities. I believe this is a reference to human beings never fully revealing themselves to each other. But it reminds me of a word I came across on the internet before, “sonder.” It is not recognized by Merriam-Webster, but it’s supposed definition is “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” I think about this often, especially in airports. All the experiences we have, the pain we’ve felt, the beauty we’ve beheld, the love, misery, ecstasy, horror, and pure joy we’ve encountered in our lives can be mirrored with a stranger passing us on the street or sitting beside us in a waiting room. And by default, the connections we share with each other without even a remote recognition. I wonder if anybody else feels as thrilled and scared as I do at this moment, I wish we could discuss it together and reassure each other.

I sit here to board my first flight and I acknowledge that life will never be the same from this moment forward, and neither will I. I use the time to write this down, so I don’t forget my emotions and can revisit later to reflect.

“Boarding flight six twenty-seven to Charlotte, departing at seven thirty-eight,” a voice calls over the speakers, and my heart skips a beat or two or three. And before I know it, I’m walking into the first vessel that will transport me into the rest of my life.

As I watched the Indiana fields fall away beneath the canopy of sunrise-drenched clouds on my first plane to Paradise, my heart began to race in a way I could feel in my throat and ears. My mind urged me onward with comfort and relief, yes! Yes! This is it! This is the moment I’ve been waiting for since I was a child, this is the adventure of a lifetime! Yet, my body felt differently, No, back to safety. Back to Adam’s arms, back to Helios and Zed and a hot cup of tea. Back to the familiarity I know. This flight was rather short, only a couple of hours. I slept most of the time, I did not sleep the previous night.

When I landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, I only had a small amount of time before boarding the next flight. I spent the time writing some more, feeling euphoric and nervous. I people watched. I tried to download music for the next two, and much longer, flights ahead to unchartered adventure…

I’m on my second flight, heading to Los Angeles now. I am ecstatic with anticipation. I am truly quenching a thirst for newness and experience. Travel is where I belong, I believe I was born to see the world and tell stories about it, and it all begins with this first sojourn. My mind feels raw with welcoming depth for new information and experiences. In this moment, I cannot believe I’ve finally left the Midwest. Not just that, I’ll be living where I’ll have miles of bright blue ocean in front of me, and lush green mountains behind me.

I can already smell the salty breeze and the crisp, naturally purified air, the dense tropical jungle soil and the fresh, thriving plants after a rainstorm. My mouth waters at the imaginary taste and texture of fresh seafood, washed down with a juicy island coconut.

I can already feel freedom. Not financially, I’ll have to work two jobs to make ends meet for some time. But that’s my choice in this transition. I mean real freedom, in my mind. The inspiration I’ve been missing for years to create art and write. I can almost feel the sun kissing my skin and hair, the trade winds cooling me down, and the strangers to cross paths with. The freedom to live in peace and to learn what it means to live with aloha.

As I stare out of these plane windows at the dancing clouds, all different shapes and sizes above the changing terrain of land below, the fear has almost completely melted away and transformed into an elation of joy I’ve never felt before. I can feel it in my bones that I am walking the path I was meant to, that this is a good decision in the course of the rest of my life. This is what it means to truly live, I just know it.

I arrived at LAX, and the heat of the west coast suffocated the skin beneath my sweater and sweatpants. I rushed off the plane to use the restroom, call some people back, and eat some food to re-fuel. It was crowded and chaotic down below, a commotion of hurried echoes climbing up the whitewashed walls. As I made my way upstairs, things got darker, quieter, and the atmosphere was almost eerie. The sudden change of pace materialized as a moment of silence in this surreal journey of mine. The harsh reality of a set-in-stone decision made in our three-dimensional world creeped up my spine and closed its thin, bony knuckles around my throat. My heart began to race, pumping blood into my face with a heat I could no longer take. This was the point of no return. I finally took my sweater off.

I used the bathroom one last time before leaving this third airport and hid in my stall for a few moments. This would be the plane that took me away from the mainland and to the middle of the north Pacific Ocean. My eyes welled up with tears born from a mixture of solitude and thrill.

On my last flight out of California my feelings had all shifted. It could have been sleep deprivation from failing to fall into deep sleep on my previous flights but rather hovering in a state between awareness and unconsciousness while constantly attempting to find a comfortable position, but suddenly I felt extremely lonely and fiercely missed my family back in the Midwest. I knew I would not see them for a few months, and even then, it’s not enough. I thought about how I would be apart from my love for eight months.

Why was I so sure that this was a good idea when I have yet to arrive to the island and already want to curl up into a fetal position and cry? I will do that after a hot shower that I desperately need after more than eighteen hours of direct travel, of which I’ll have to buy a towel I cannot wash first and be careful not to splash water on the floor as I lack a shower liner and will inevitably forget to buy one.

Please Gods, let this be as smooth of a transition for all four of us as you can.

The views flying over O’ahu were breathtaking. It was the most majestic experience I’ve ever encountered up until that point in my life. The thrill of seeing my new home for the first time sparked a madness within me. An idea that if it truly was this doable to see this journey to its end, it will be more than doable to achieve the rest of the long list of dreams and aspirations that my brain has manifested into such discomfort and dissatisfaction over the last few years. Spiritual misty mountains touched the thick clouds below and rolled into the grand town of Honolulu with its umpteen skyscrapers that were no match for the elevation of natural land. Cobalt ocean sprayed with white, frothy waves crashed against the cliffy slopes of the island in some areas, and gently kissed the soft sand in others. There was even a rainbow in the sky to greet the arrival of our plane. I took it as a sign from the Gods that I would be safe and sound.

As I walked off the last passenger boarding bridge and into the Honolulu airport, the fear and loneliness dissipated into the purest form of ecstasy I’d ever encountered; the type of childlike happiness and wonder that a person will never find in any drug. I rushed to baggage claim, slowing down as I came to a long corridor open to the great outdoors. I drank in the smells around me as I gazed at the palm trees before me, and a warm feeling tingled across my skin and into my lungs.

I made it. I escaped the monotony of statistical life. I leapt into the unknown with fear and enthusiasm, I changed the course that generations before me had built for me, a life of mundane familiarity. I had always feared that I’d fall into the sameness our society intoxicates our minds into believing is just “how it is.” I had dreaded that I’d never accomplish my longest dream of traveling the world, solo and with a partner, on an almost full-time basis, and eventually, full-time. I had been afraid that I’d get sucked into the grasp of “normal” reality of finding a nine-to-five job to work until my mid-sixties, getting married young and having kids and being so busy following the crowd that my youth would be spent on working and raising a family— leaving myself behind to put the children first and abandoning my desires in the “someday” category, and risking never seeing that day come, for Death is the most unwelcome of unexpected guests. I escaped the potential, usual and increasingly daunting statistic of most high school dropouts. There is nothing wrong with walking a traditional life, but the idea that I very well may burned me at my core and left me listlessly staring at my ceiling for many nights, and it stared back at me with the ghostly and decrepit smile of sadism. I had been lost for some time, allowing my vision of seeing the world as a young person with my health intact slip into the land of dream purgatory. And now I stand on an island I’ve never been to before, where I know no one, approximately four thousand three hundred forty-seven miles away from our apartment in Greenwood, Indiana, all alone and with the whole world seemingly at my fingertips. There is no end to the possibilities of boundlessly migrating from one place to a new one after this first jump into the abyss of adventure. I have found myself on the road less traveled, and synapses in my brain have altered into new ways of communicating and transmitting signals, new ways of adapting to change, new thought processes, new physiological responses, new behaviors, new programming. I left everything I’ve ever known behind and stumbled upon a new era in my timeline.

Though as life has it, things… changed once I left the airport. Aside from the views of the mountains leaving the airport stealing my breath away, the first eighteen hours were brutal. I was picked up by the finance manager of the used car dealership I had bought my car from, a nice enough guy, but he was crass, and he tried to pick me up in a different way. For lack of better terms, the dude was kind of a douche bag. He drove me to pick up my new vehicle (which I had purchased remotely), a Toyota Corolla that I was so grateful to have found the deal I did for her. Mahina, I named her, the Hawaiian word for moonlight and the moon deity. He disappeared as soon as he handed me my keys, as the mood seemed to change the instant that I mentioned I had a loving boyfriend of almost seven years.

The sun sets early in Hawai’i, at least early for what summer in the Midwest brings for sunlight, especially at the end of August. My plane landed at six twenty-two in the evening. By the time I got into my new car (well, new to me) it was around seven twelve, the sun had set, and it was getting very dark fast. I hurriedly set the GPS on my phone to my new address and pulled out of the tiny lot. As I drove through the foreign city, darkness shrouding over me, dodging the numerous houseless people jaywalking the streets, the mopeds bobbing and weaving between the lanes, and a quickness in traffic flow that felt as though I was driving through a love-child city of Los Angeles and a European country of narrow roads, fear once again settled into the pit of my stomach and high alertness woke my nervous system like it’s never been awakened before. The streetlights were not hanging in front of the lanes but rather sat on poles on either side of the road, something to get used to. When I came to the next stoplight, not far from my new home, I changed directions to head straight for the Walmart nearby. There was no way I was going to go home and then walk in the dark, and I had to go, I needed some bare essentials for the night, including an air mattress so I could have a place to sleep.

I parked my car in the large parking garage and walked toward the entrance, doing my best to appear as a local and not as the terrified little girl I suddenly felt like. I made the trip in and out as quickly as possible and rushed back to my car into the safety of locked doors, and headed for home, getting lost and driving in a couple circles along the way. Once I arrived at my building, it was easy to find my door as I had religiously studied google maps before I arrived, though not enough to avoid taking a few wrong turns. I did my best to hurry, taking all of my new belongings into my new apartment as well as my luggage, not trying to appear frantic, though constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody was watching the lonely woman clearly moving into an apartment from a different place in the world. What was more fearsome was the sound of clanking glass bottles nearby, the sounds sending intense apprehension along the back of my neck that raised my hair and gave me goosebumps.

I am now in my apartment, and the sound of silence is growing louder by the minute, except it’s not silent at all. It’s a Monday night, but it sounds more like a Friday night. I can hear every sound outside of my curtainless jalousie windows, the scuffle of the wind whipping the Ti plant on the back patio echoing to portray the ghostly sound of footsteps being taken in the kitchen. Drunken couples and groups walk through the neighborhood loudly and belligerently, and I turn my lights out for fear of being seen and potentially targeted. Sitting in the dark, I’m trying to ignore the unfamiliarity of the empty apartment as solitude seeps from the concrete walls and encloses me in an alien pod of vanishing enthusiasm that’s rapidly resulting in a sullen ego.

After multiple jump scares attempting to fall into sleep to awaken to the comforting sign of rising daylight, I hear what sounded like a woman saying, “We can see you,” while walking past. I believe it was my mind playing tricks on me. I curled up and cried for about a half hour. I did not take a shower that night. After a few more scares, I finally drifted off into the blissful ignorance of unconsciousness for a few bittersweet hours.

When I awoke in the morning, it was just before five. I finally took a shower, carefully guiding the wand across my hair and body to avoid spilling on the cheap tile outside of the tub. I got dressed in the bathroom, something I never do, and opened the door back up to the hot apartment. I chatted on the phone with Adam and felt much better than I did just a few hours prior. I put on a white romper with blue stripes, left my hair to air dry, and set out for a walk to the beach to catch my first sunrise and hopefully return to the euphoric emotions I had the night before things got dark.

On my lonely walk down the foreign streets of closed shops and traffic picking up for morning rush hour, I took in the new smells around me as I gazed up at the towering condominiums that rule the famous town. The cooing of zebra doves filled my ears and put me slightly at ease, it truly is a beautiful sound. I walked past an overwhelming atmosphere of newness and around forty or so houseless individuals, some hidden in makeshift tents of tarp, some huddled along the side of buildings in sleeping bags, and some lying on sidewalks without even a blanket. It made my heart break, and reminded me that even though I was afraid, I still had things to be grateful for, such as a roof, a car, and a job. I wandered around for a glimmer of peace to soothe the turmoil in my mind for what I had just done. The travel here was no dream, it really happened. Wow… I actually live here now.

As I neared the beach, the smells of tropical town, urine, and car exhaust drifted off behind me and were replaced by salt and sand. A smell I clung to since my last visit to the islands, in Kauai’i. My olfactory senses reclaimed my joy and in that moment I nearly forgot about the loneliness and trepidation. Seeing the blue ocean in front of me at last brought tears to my eyes and I felt as though I couldn’t observe enough at one time. I had to remind myself that I don’t need to drink it all in at once, I’m not on a vacation which will end in a grudging return to dreadful Indiana, I’m home. I’m finally home. The view isn’t going anywhere.

I’m finally home.

The sun peaked its morning glory rays through the fuchsia, and golden clouds and danced across the water in twinkles of glimmering peace. It rose from the horizon at its own pace and revealed the majesty of the nearby ancient and extinct volcanic crater, Diamond Head. I sat on a bench on Magic Island Lagoon and breathed in the scent of warm, salty sea and wet volcanic rock, sprinkled with wonder and exploit. Some moments passed and I chatted with a couple originally from Pittsburg. Breaking out of my fragile shell of being an introvert a few years ago truly opened my eyes to the magic of conversing with strangers, and how quickly it can soothe the sting of loneliness, even if just for a short time. I spent a bit longer gazing at the surreal natural beauty of Paradise, then stood and made my way back into town in search of a much-needed local coffee.

After going back home and crying some more while seriously contemplating whether I had made the right decision to come here, the next few days sort of blurred together. It was frenzied settling in dripping with desperation. I talked with people on the phone to find calmness, I shopped and made my miserably empty apartment survivable, and I hunted for a second job with haste. I had transferred my main job from the mainland, but I needed another to manage everything comfortably.

The gratitude for having the life-changing capabilities it took within me to take this leap into the infinity pool of wandering slowly began to chip away at the iron-clad loneliness that stole away the enjoyment of starting a new life in a far away place, and began to paint the walls of my thoughts the color of dim, blue light as the solitude sank away and transformed into a safe space of salvation. If I was going to be here all alone for some time, I was going to do so by keeping good company with myself… and so I did.

I got my second job within the first week I landed after increasingly becoming more and more anxious that I wouldn’t find something decent. I got hired for one I had interviewed for before leaving Indiana, a commercial and residential cleaning job, but I had already signed an offer for one the day before receiving notice of hire. I wanted that one badly, the pay was good and the scheduling worked with my other job. It turned out to be a blessing disguised in timing that I did not go there and ended up with the one I have now. I love my new job and my coworkers, and the skills I’ve gained will push me further into job security anywhere I go.

I started exploring the island around me, my new home. I visited beautiful beaches, hiked the most glorious mountains, swam in the warmest waters, ate the best food of my life thus far, and met incredible people along the way. I slowly accumulated furniture to make the space my own and create an inviting and cozy atmosphere to come home to, and it made a world of difference. I bought things for my pets well before their arrival to get things comfortable and as familiar as I could for them. I finally bought an electric tea kettle and could have my tea in the nighttime while I read and wrote, and it helped a lot, since I used this new chapter in life to finally quit drinking alcohol. I spent one day a week going to the laundromat to get my minimal amount of clothes washed and spent my free time in the evenings writing and creating, and falling asleep pleased with how my day went each night. Back in 2019, I bought my very first Samsung smart washer and dryer set, I loved them so much and hated to sell them for this new beginning, I used to say, “I’ll never go to a laundromat again in my life.” How materialistic and sad that was, for if I stuck to those high maintenance standards I truly could have kissed my aspirations goodbye.

After some months, we finally reached a point where Adam could fly down with both our dog and cat to bring them to the island and so we could have a break and see each other, and even celebrate our seven year anniversary while he was here. It was surreal, having my family all together again in the place I had cried over moving to for so long. I enjoyed showing him around the island for the measly thirty-six hours he was with me, our finances forced him to only stay a short time, to drop the pets off to me and go basically. But it was a short time neither one of us will ever forget, seeing each other again after so long and picking up where we left off and exploring together and making love as if we were never apart to begin with. That’s love.

I finally reached a point where I could set time and money aside to get a U.S. passport, so one day I walked into the Walmart nearby to purchase a money order for my application. I innocently wandered into the seasonal department expecting to still find gardening equipment, this one did not have a garden center. Instead, I found myself in the midst of beautiful Christmas decorations, one of my favorite times of year. I love the smells, the decorations, the joy, the practice of giving, and the twinkling lights around every corner. I used to work for Walmart, for almost six years, the majority of that time spent in the graveyard shift. The memory of a silent, eerie-beneath-fluorescent-lighting-yet-somehow-dim Walmart with low holiday music weaving throughout the empty aisles crept up into the present moment; a memory of window shopping the Christmas décor and imagining how beautiful our three bedroom home would look with the added cheer, how marvelous our trees would be with some new burlap bows, how welcoming the front door would be with an Earth-toned wreath. The nostalgia momentarily wiped my mind clean of everything I had just done the last several months, until walking back outside in the mid-November seventy-six degree weather and receiving a gentle humid smack to the face of the changes constituted in my life, and recognizing how drastically different things can be after a handful of years and a series of irrevocable decisions, as I looked down the telescope of time. This made me slightly sad, until I remembered that everything in this life is temporary, and someday I’ll enjoy Christmas by a roaring fire in the snowy Alps of Switzerland. So for now, I must enjoy what I came here for.

As the time passed I became more and more relaxed in this new place, and surer of myself and who I am in my own skin. It’s strange, really. I’ve spent my entire life tending to myself, learning things the hard way and on my own, and I’ve never felt more confident in my ability to take care of myself no matter where I am in this world than I do in this moment, after making this decision and following through. It is absolutely true what they say about comfort, it’s the killer of dreams, the ultimate enemy. In order to pursue the life you envision for yourself, you must get uncomfortable.

The Hawaiian Aloha culture is truly everything I had researched it to be, everything I had experienced previously in Kaua’i. The people are some of the most wonderful creatures I’ve crossed paths with, and I’ve made friends I never would have met had I not taken this scary chance. “The only thing more beautiful about Hawai’i than the land itself is the people,” Bambi told me this one day and it stuck.

This leap into my first sojourn has taught me many valuable lessons and filled my life with experiences I’ll be grateful to have had in my youth by the time I’m aged and wise. It has breached a threshold in the realm of opportunities with doors opening by the minutes I never would have turned the knobs on had I stayed put in Indiana. It’s the first stay of many in a new place, to learn more about the world around me and see how other people live. Already the next two years of my life are booked with trips to see more and learn more.

For the very first time in my life, I am no longer worried about the future. I am living in the present moment, I am stopping to smell the flowers, I am at peace in my mind, and I have achieved the ultimate goal of realizing happiness in its purest form. I have finally met myself. What it took was not just bravery and discipline, it took sacrifice, discomfort, fear, and faith. It wasn’t until I learned how to want less that I had begun to experience my dreams coming to fruition.

I hope someday you, Reader, can experience the magnitude of chasing your dreams as well. When you awake tomorrow, remind yourself that it is a beautiful day to be alive. ©

A Leap into My First Sojourn

O’ahu

The Turning Point Trip

The Positively Wandering Travel Diaries ©