Glass Dreams

There has to be more out there than this.

Those are the words that started me on the path I now travel. I felt so lost and alone, even surrounded by people who supposedly cared about me, even loved me. I didn’t have a bad life. That wasn’t it at all. In fact, an outside observer would probably have called my life pretty good. I worked as a high school English teacher; I rented a pretty nice apartment in a decent part of the city; I had friends I went out with every weekend; I even had a pretty serious boyfriend. So yeah, from the outside, my life seemed pretty damn good. I should have been happy. Hell, I was luckier than most of my friends, all things considered.

But I wasn’t happy. In fact, I felt like there was a huge gaping hole inside of me. I was empty. I couldn’t explain it then, and I certainly can’t explain it now. There was no reason for the feeling emptiness. There was no logical reason for why I felt so alone, so incomplete, so uneasy. So I kept the feelings to myself. I never told anyone how miserable I really was. Then one day, I just left. Just like that. Gone. I didn’t tell anyone—not my friends, not my boyfriend. I just packed up the bare necessities and turned my keys into the apartment manager. Then I disappeared.

So here I am. Trying to find the “more” that I know is out there somewhere. I can’t tell you why I chose Sellwood to start my life over. I don’t even know the answer to that question. I was just driving, and this is where I happened to stop. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to my choice. It just…is. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. I guess it depends on if I find whatever it is I’m looking for, or if history repeats itself.