The wind felt warm on his face and he immediately began to describe it in his mind. Refreshing, clear, an awakening. “There I go again,” he thought. “Over dramatizing simple things.” A writer, he tended to exaggerate even the most mundane events, and the ocean breeze had been too much to ignore. He laughed at himself as he remembered the three page poem he’d written about the tip of a cotton swab. “I have come a long way.”

He was alone, maybe for the first time in his life. He was acutely aware of the advantages: no lawnmowers outside his bedroom window, no more constant questions from curious children, no more stares from insensitive by-standers. Yes, solitude had it’s advantages, but it had come with a price.

His decision to leave had been hard on his parents, and he wondered how they were handling it now. It had been two weeks since he’d left home, and the move had been hard for all of them. He had watched his parents care for him everyday of his thirty years, and he’d finally decided that he couldn’t put them though anymore. The energy it took to help him through just one day had finally taken its toll on them, and he had chosen to do the only thing that seemed right: he had gone out to try it on his own.

Tomorrow: Questions – Part II