Somewhere Between Exits
My utmost favorite part of road trips is the in-between. The parts no one writes postcards about. The hours between gas stations and playlists running out. The weird quiet when the sun starts to dip behind the trees and everyone in the car is just staring out their own window, thinking about nothing or everything.
I like the small moments of newness. Like spotting a giant Paul Bunyan statue holding an axe in the middle of nowhere. Or a banana slug climbing up a redwood tree, slow and yellow and weirdly beautiful. Things that feel too absurd to be real, like they were placed there just for me to find.
On a drive to Portland, Oregon, I started to feel something shift. I realized I had grown out of being homesick. It hit me like a soft realization, not a loud one. Just a gentle knowing that I no longer missed my room, or my bed, or the people back home in that painfully familiar beach town. I used to get homesick at camp in sixth grade and never really stopped, but now I feel lighter. Like I could live in a hundred places and still feel like myself.
That was the first thing.
The second thing I learned is that when I’m nowhere near familiarity, I become more myself. There’s something about leaving behind the Lululemon uniforms and unprovoked side-eye of my hometown that makes me breathe easier. The forced coolness, the curated beach waves, the casual cruelty masked as confidence. It’s exhausting. In Portland, or anywhere that isn’t drenched in Southern California sun and self-importance, I feel clearer. More playful. I wear what I want without mentally editing myself. I speak without polishing my voice into something more palatable. Because who cares. No one at the truck stop in Eureka is going to remember me. I don’t owe them anything. There’s freedom in that.
The third thing is this: my imagination goes kind of feral when I’m on the road. Something about the miles rolling by makes everything feel possible. I’ll stare out at a diner with flickering neon signs and wonder what it would be like if I lived here. If that grocery store with the crooked sign was my regular spot. Maybe I own a bookstore that smells like lemon and dust. Maybe I work a job that doesn’t make me feel disposable. Maybe I’m raising a kid who loves frogs and never learned to be afraid of burgers. Maybe we swim in this lake four times a year, and it becomes our thing. Maybe I stop being scared of wanting things. Maybe I build a life that doesn’t make me ache.
There’s something about road trips that feels like possibility stretched out on asphalt. And maybe that’s why I love them. Because they remind me that my life doesn’t have to stay small just because it started that way.
