Leaving Cork City...
"Take me to the station and put me on a train, I've got not expectations to pass through here again...never in my sweet short life have I felt like this before...And as I watch you leaving me, you pack my peace of mind..." [-The Rolling Stones]
It's just past six in the morning and I am sleepy. And cold. And sad. And happy. And perhaps stuck in that place where the cup is neither half empty nor half full, but both coexisting in my heart.
The taxi drops me at Kent Station and I make my way to the platform. As I step onto the train, I pause and inhale and close my eyes, and exhale and board.
The train pulls away and I watch Cork City fade into the distance as silent tears roll down my pale face. I didn't expect this. I didn't count on this. I didn't prepare for this. My heart as it were is a lot like Dorothy searching for Kansas, walking the yellow brick road, looking for the great Wizard of Oz, just trying to make her way back home. Home. That place where you know that you are loved. That place that whispers belonging into every fiber of your being, deep into the marrow of your fragile bones. It is a warmth. And a calm. It is a joy. And a hope. It is the place where you find the best of yourself. Home. And as strange as it might seem, this place felt a lot like home for a girl who is always searching for that place...
I close my eyes and let myself say goodbye.
All the while hoping that's is really just see you later.
***
Welcome to Edinburgh...
"So long my friend, we could always count on the same things; The ups and the downs like time; We crawl through the abyss then we came through the other side; Heaviness is only temporary, the daylight will soon break in, the sunlight can change a heart in the wake of a bitter end. Oh I know I’m gonna rise again, set my sights on where I’m going and my goodbyes to where I've been; Oh I know I’m gonna rise again..." [-Needtobreathe]
The taxi drops me off at the Paradise Palms, my Air B&B for the next few days. I love it immediately. It's all things artsy and colorful and it touches that part of me that resonates with the dreamers and the poets and the creatives of this world.
It's late in the afternoon and I find that I just want to walk around the city, just enough to taste it. And so I grab my umbrella and step out the door without any particular direction. I find that I am embracing the getting lost, for it is in the getting lost that we find ourselves and so I walk. Through Edinburgh University, down West College Street, past Potterow, up South Bridge and back down again.
I walk in disconnected patterns. I walk until the sun goes down. I walk until my feet are as tired as my heart. And then the sky opens wide and pours down on me, and I stand there for a moment, in the pouring rain, lost in the city, washing off the last traces of home.
My umbrella breaks. Isn't that lovely, welcome to a new day my darling, a new path, a new discovery of who you are, let's take a walk, just like Calum told you up the road and around the corner, let's find out where it leads...
I finally find my way back to the Paradise Palms, 2 hours later, drenched head to toe in the Scotland rain. And while it was a shock to my system, this welcoming committee, it seems to signify a newness to this journey.
And it rises up in me, that song that I love, and I think to myself, yes, yes, I am going to rise again.
And I crawl into bed, clean and ready to rise...
-Jillian Nichole, rising...
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