"All my hopes and memories are blowing in the wind, I started off with nothing and I'm back here once again; The little things in life are free, the simple things, like you and me; Like love, like love; It's okay to start again cause change is gonna come, nothing ever stays the same, it's not like we're still young; Let's blow it up and burn it down so we can stand alone, fear of change, no fear of the unknown..." [-Amy MacDonald]
Thursday, September 14th, 2017...
It is a wild and untamed land, something out of a Burns poem, the highlands. It is magic in the most complex manor. It is a people that still carry the weight of folklore and superstitions. The Loch Ness Monster, the river horse, the fairies, the bend in the trees, the light in the shallows, the depth of the black- it is mountains that peak into a kingdom of clouds and roads that stretch forth into a world not yet see by the eyes of men...
I stand in the rain staring out into the black of Loch Ness, my heart skipping beats, a fine mist of rain falling around me- there are words that I want to speak that seem to rise up from the core of me and yet those words remain unspoken because quite frankly, they are words that have yet to be invented. And so they rest in the worn out corners of my soul, unspoken, and yet I know them just the same.
The day is a blur of color and rain and cold and awestruck wonder at the works of the hands of the God in which I have believed in since the summer that I turned seventeen.
It is a wrestles kind of wonder that I wrestle with around the corner of each bend in the road as we ascended into the highlands and so too, as we descended back down.
And when the day comes to an end, I walk back to the Paradise Palms, quiet, and full.
***
[Blow it up. Burn it down. A detour...]
Earlier in the day, I had realized that I did not have my wallet on me. I figured that I'd just left it in the room. I had decided to have dinner with some of the people that I had gotten to know on my tour, and so I walked back to the Paradise Palms to retrieve my wallet and as I searched my belongings, it was no where to be found.
Cue massive panic...like apocalyptic panic...I tore through my room like a hurricane, desperately searching for it and when it was clear that it was not there, I sunk to the floor, like a Raggedy Anne doll, folding into myself.
I was in shock for all of thirty seconds and then I was a hyperventilating, crying my mascara off, rocking myself back and forth kind of disaster.
I am in a foreign country with no access to money. I am alone. I am terrified. I don't know what to do.
Perhaps you are more situated for these kinds of things but I assure that I am most certainly not...
I begin to dial numbers in my phone until I realize what time it is in the States. But I make one more call to my mentor Vicky and she answers and I am almost certain that I am not making coherent sentences but she is able to decipher me just the same.
She is a pillar of calm. Breathe Jillian. Breathe. Call the bank. Call your credit card company. And breathe. Keep breathing.
I start with the credit card company, Sarah from Capital One did not train for this, for the girl in Edinburgh who lost her wallet, who can't breathe, who is choking on tears, whilst saying that she knew she ought to never have come here abroad by herself, because everything she touches falls apart, that she's scared, really scared, and that she doesn't know what to do- what does she do, can you help her, you have to help her, please, please- at that last please it was as if I had lost the will to move forward and it came out a breathless, broken, sob.
We go through the motions. We check the boxes. We breathe. And as Sarah gives me the last bit of necessary information, I hear it in her voice, she's crying too. And that somehow makes me cry all the much harder.
The dial tone echoes so loudly in my head. And I sit there in the pulsing lights of the street life below, a fragile piece of a burnt down courage.
***
Interlude: 2 hours after the fact through what is now an amusing exchange with my mentor Vicky, my wallet is found. Truth be told it had never been lost at all, I merely hid it between the mattress that first night at the Paradise Palms because I had not the security of a door with a lock as I had when I was staying in hotels- and I was so afraid, so afraid that my wallet would be taken. Strange how in retrospect it was my fear that ultimately took it from me- Thinking about it now, I don't exactly know what to do with that, I only know that it somehow feels significant...
***
It's almost midnight and my phone lights up with a text message, I read the words and the thin rebound of courage that I had, blows up into little pieces of shrapnel... "We regret to inform you that your Ryanair flight has been canceled..."
WTAF (and for delicate readers, I will leave it at that...)
Let's review for the record the series of events that have taken place in the last 48 hours:
A. I am a girl with a broken umbrella in a city that is drowning in rain...
B. I lost my wallet. And while it was found, it locked my bank account and shut down my credit card and the only useable income that I have is on Apple Pay with my new credit card information- and literally nowhere takes Apple Pay here, except Tesco, and I have developed an unhealthy bond with Tesco at this point...
C. RYAINAIR CANCELLED MY FLIGHT TO BACK TO DUBLIN...AND I AM NOW STRANDED IN EDINBURGH WITH A BROKEN UMBRELLA AND THE USELESSNESS OF APPLE PAY...
Let the capitalization reflect the state of things...
I don't sleep. I stay awake trying to figure out how not to need a rescue from this...I don't want to be this version of myself that always somehow feels as if I am a walking princess in a tower. And my god, it seems at every turn, with every exhaustive step I try to take forward, it all blows up and burns down- and maybe I never feel as though I am able to extinguish the flames on my own...
***
Friday, September 15th, 2017...
I am laying awake in my bed- the alarm has been ringing- it's a surprisingly un-rainy day. I wonder if I should bother to go on my adventure for the day or if I should resign myself to this bed, cursing my ineptitude at adulting-
Jillian, get the fuck up. And yes, this is how I talk to myself- Sometimes it's needs be...
Jillian get the fuck up. NOW.
RIGHT NOW.
And while it is slow and clumsy and mechanical even, I put on my clothes, I paint my face, I pull on my boots and I grab my backpack and step into the cold Edinburgh morning.
Years from now, what I will remember the most of this day is Mike the driver from Liverpool, who told us stories of his Glasgow days and that pretty little Glasgow girl that he married, of his favorite tour participant to date- the elderly lady from Beijing who loved sheep so much that he made a special stop just for her so that she could take photos of them and how she was so happy that she actually chased after them in circles for a good fifteen minutes, I will remember the jokes that he told, the ones that were passed down from his father and his father's father before him-
I will remember walking over the Tweed River crossing into England. How I stood middle ground between two worlds and looked out over the lowlands of Scotland and clear into the empty road leading into Northumberland.
I will remember standing still in the archway of Alnwick Castle- a.k.a. "OMG, I'M AT HOGWARTS!!!!!"
I will remember the sun on my face and the rush of the wind and the childlike joy in my heart as I yelled to a broomstick, "Mount!"
I will remember laughing as though I had never laughed before. With an unbroken, untamed, uninhibited spirit, running to and fro across a lawn, on an otherwise ordinary Friday afternoon in the courtyard of Hogwarts with my fellow first years.
I will remember the warm camaraderie of this particular tour group. The couple from Utah, the grandmother from West Virginia, the newlyweds from Reno, the sisters from Japan, the father and mother and son trio from South Korea- the way we chatted in beautiful weaves of yarn, how even the silence seemed a new brand of friendship.
I will remember walking back to the Paradise Palms watching the sunset set over the North Bridge as a gentle rain began to fall.
I will remember how there seemed a sacred albeit simple kind of magic to this day that despite my broken umbrella, my lost and found credit card, and my canceled flight- despite all of that, this simple, undefined, near scared magic flourished up in between the ashes and the rubble.
And I will remember that I knew it, that magic, for even but a moment, in my heart I knew it.
As I crawl into bed, I tell myself that I can face tomorrow, cancelled flight and all, I can face it, I can look it in the eyes, I can feel the fear, blow it up and burn it down, and I can stand in my own right, and face the unknown, and isn't that a magic all it's own, I wonder...
-Jillian Nichole, let's blow it up and burn it down...
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