William Wordsworth

Sometimes I come across a quote that speaks so directly to my heart, it feels as if it echoes something inside me. Today it is Wordsworth...

"More like a man flying from something that he dreads, than one who sought the thing that he loved."

When I left home to go to college, I think that everyone was so sure that I knew what I wanted to do and be like, where I wanted to go, the life I wanted to live. But the truth is that I had only a vague idea. I wasn't really running towards something, some dream, so much as I was running away. The life that my parents had always led, in a small town, in what felt like an antiquated life frightened me. It was the last place, and certainly the last life I envisioned for myself.

I did run, from high school, from college, from Maine, as if in running I could find my answer, the elusive something waiting out there for me.

I kept on running, only to end up in Saint Mary's, a town in so many ways like home. But I know that I could never go back. It holds too much pain and memory. It knows too much of me and the parts of my life I have tried so hard to forget and leave behind.

I often wondered if that was the very reason I have to go back - to find the peace and comfort that could only ever be found on the other side of remembering, and forgiveness.

Somewhere along the way I realized that roads aren't for destinations but for journeys. In my running I came back to myself, one day and one place at a time.

And now I am where I should be. I carry a small piece of Maine in my heart like a talisman. It often warms me when the days and nights get long. I can lose myself in my memories of the ocean - the surf and the sand, and then somehow things seems all right.