Words didn't need to be spoken. Blame it on tiredness, link it to the realization that 11 months had come and gone, point your finger at sunburns and too much food. Whatever your reason, silence hung in the air. The pepto bismol colored taxi moved slowly away from the restaurant where our squad ate its final meal together, it trudged up and down the back roads to one of our last hotels. The curves winding alongside the ocean, this dark water lit up by a crescent moon with such a color of white and blue and grey with hints of navy and purple mixed into the black that it can only be captured in the moment. It’s beauty is too much even for a memory.
Yet I pray I never forget it.
This can’t be the end of this race, it can’t be the end of my family, of this community. It can’t be the end of moto rides on some of the most beautiful roads. It can’t be the end of sunsets and sunrises over oceans I never thought I would see. It can’t be the end of inside jokes and laughter and new words and weird food. It can’t be the end of a love I never knew existed. How do you even begin to process this? How do you begin to explain to people what just happened in the last year of your life when each day that comes closer to getting on another plane and heading “home,” makes the last 323 days seem like a dream?
This is not the second to last day of my race. It can’t be. I just flew out of New York City, I just stopped in Poland and landed in Romania. I just rode a European train. I just started this journey. Didn’t I just leave? Didn’t I just meet all of these strangers in the middle of no where Tennessee? Where did it go? How did we get here?
The verge of tears started tonight. They didn’t come. I can’t cry over something I don’t believe.
