Secret

I have always craved my own secret spot. A place where I can be alone and think. An area that is mine, where I can get to know myself again. When I was younger it was the curtains pulled shut around my bed, the back of  the cubby in my room. Then it was in the branches of the tree in my backyard where I would climb and sit and swing for hours, letting my imagination run wild as I envisioned myself as an Indian running through the forest or climbing a cliff or taming the wild horses.

I had a secret spot in the forest surrounding the cabin in Montana. I would walk through the bushes and grass, balancing on fallen trees while I pretended I was the fourth friend in the Harry Potter trio. Sometimes all it took was a blanket draped across a table with a bean bag underneath to have my own lair where I could plot how to overthrow the evil wizard or figure out the code on the "Lights Out" game in order to free my fellow spy from an eternal imprisonment.

Then I grew up.

Suddenly being alone was a sign of social incompetence. If I wasn't physically with my friends I needed to be connected to them through technology. I couldn't be alone because if I was alone that meant I had failed. It meant I was undesirable and...alone.

My secret spots disappeared. I was never alone. My imagination was crumpled as I swamped it with movie after movie, drama after drama, and selfishness after selfishness. I didn't think about adventures anymore. I thought about how this person had wronged me, how I could get this boy to like me, how I could get invited to this party or who I could spend my weekend with. My imagination was exhausted with trivial things and malnourished to the extent that it might have died.

This scares me.

Yesterday I went out by myself. I didn't go because I wanted to. I went because I couldn't stand to be alone in my apartment anymore. My addiction to company was manifesting itself in my forlorn and despairing attitude. So I left. I took my hiking backpack and my bike. I just started riding away. Through a series of intersections, hills, and dodging of water guns, I found myself 30 minutes away from my apartment at the base of a canyon. I stashed my bike in the bushes and started hiking, taking deer trails and scratching my legs on the still bare branches of the hibernating vegetation.

I found a new secret spot.
I met myself again.
I am ok with who I am.
I plan on being alone more often.