The Arrow

Every Journey leaves its marks, that don’t fade when the bags are unpacked.

Let me share one of mine….

Life seemed to happen while I was looking the other way. One day I turned around and it was gone. I found myself completely disorientated with no real understanding on how I got here. Alone in this darkness I found myself stripped of my “social mirrors” unable to see who I was. Every instinct I had told me to run and hide. I was all flight and no fight. Trapped by a pride that taught me silence was a sanctuary and not a cage. I was sinking. How, Where and Why questions filled the floor of my mind like papers from a cabinet overturned in a break in. The words made no sense, and the mess was too heavy to lift. I was frozen in that moment while time stood still but morning waits for no one.

The city woke up starting another day without my permission. The light crept in through the cracks in the curtains revealing a familiar room that now felt foreign. What was once loved and cherished was now varnished with anger and heartache. A sharp, painful, rumbling in my stomach, (part hunger, part grief,) lifted me up out my seat. Work would be calling soon but I was no use to no one. I couldn’t be found here like this.

Until this day I still don’t know why but without thinking I grabbed my car keys, phone, wallet and passport. I got in the car and drove out of town on autopilot. I had no idea where I was going, no plan, no clue and running on empty. With no sleep and no fight in me, flying blind was my only option with a silent pride keeping me for company.

After several miles, several counties away, a hollow gut rumble and a flashing fuel light demanded a service station stop. Entering the concrete decaying services, I headed for the toilets with the idea of freshening up. Looking into the cracked mirror above the sink I caught my broken reflection for a second before the darkness blind-sided me again. A film of a stranger’s complete life being destroyed by failures belonging to me hit me hard. I rushed into a cubicle just in time to empty my body of the last of its contents. Sitting slumped I grabbed a fistful of tissue to wipe my mouth. Burying my face into the clump of paper I wept. The silence of the cold cubicle felt like a confessional where the real weight of my reality came pouring out.

Washed, empty and fragile I managed to order a coffee and find a seat by the empty café window. Looking at my muted, silent mobile I saw several missed calls and demanding texts on my disappearance. The multiple heavy questions I had the night before were now narrowed down to one of “What now?”. Feeling my cracked heart beating heavy I sucked in a deep breathe to swallow down a possible panic attack. With mindful concentration I stirred my coffee slowly clockwise then anti clockwise for 5 deep breathes allowing me the strength to lift my head and look out the window.

The exit from these services stretched in every direction, choices I was not yet ready to make. My compass was broken, but the needle still pointed to away. Away was all I had and for now it was enough. Pride locked the door to familiar faces who could offer asylum, I will have to do this alone. I don’t have a plan or a destination, to do so would make me a tourist. A tourist sees what they came to see, I needed to see what I could find. The mix of caffeine and accompanying chocolate brownie sparked a fragile clarity in me. I wasn’t just leaving these cold empty services; I was abandoning the broken man who spilled his last in the shadowed cubicle.

The bold white arrow exits signs in front of me pointed in many directions and different versions of “not here”. Drawing another deep breath, I closed my eyes making a pact with myself that the road would choose me. But as I moved the car out onto the road ahead a large lorry swept past with its side emblazoned with a giant arrow. Corny taglines where quoted underneath and on the back, “Pointing you Forward” and “Every Mile On Target”. I froze right there as if the fog in my mind had suddenly cleared. This was it, my “Aha!” moment. It was as if the world had stopped whispering and suddenly started shouting. A sense of purpose replaced my nausea and confusion. I was the Arrow.

I wasn’t sinking, I was being pulled back to take better aim. The weight of my pride and my inherited silence felt like anchors dragging me down to the bottom of my darkness but in fact it was the bow string being pulled to its limit. I had mistaken the tension as a trap but now see it’s a trajectory.

Taking the car onto the road ahead I felt the weight of the past had been lifted. Released and left behind with the rest of my history. Life pulled me back into the shadows so it could aim  me at something better. I no longer need to see the destination to know I am moving with purpose. I am in flight, and for the first time, I am the one holding the aim. Every mile of my journey ahead isn't just travel, it's all part of my flight and my discovery. 

Sometimes the universe uses a corny slogan on a delivery lorry to remind us we’re still on target. We just need to be quiet enough to hear it.