My Trip To Lincoln City, Oregon

            I have never had to try so hard to hold back so many tears as I did on that short two hour flight from Salt Lack City, Utah to Portland, Oregon.  Minutes earlier I had been clinging tightly to my mother, waiting for the dreaded moment when I would have to board the flight that would deliver me to an unknown world for an entire month.  Now I was doing my best to avert the worried glances of my fellow passengers and flight attendants as I watched the world below me slowly drop away into nothingness.

            I had never been away from my mother for more than five days at once, and even during those short spaces of time I was usually consumed by homesickness.  It was no wonder I was beginning to rethink my decision to live with an aunt and uncle I barely knew in order to clean beach houses alongside my cousin whom I also barely knew.  Too bad these doubts had come just a little too late.

            My whole trip had begun about a year earlier, although I didn’t know it then.  I had gone to Oregon for spring break with my mom partly because it was somewhere we hadn’t been before and partly to visit.  It was the first time I had seen the Pacific and it was beautiful.  I found myself mesmerized by the waves crashing on the many rocks which dotted the coast line.  My heart was captured by those waves and when my aunt saw how much I loved the ocean, she suggested that I could go live with her during the summer and clean houses.  I never thought it would actually happen, but it did.

            The trip itself should have been great.  I was staying in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.  I was being allowed into houses I would never be able to afford in my wildest dreams and being paid for it.  The people I was working with were extraordinary women who I would never forget.  I should have been happy, but I wasn’t.  The ocean was still beautiful, but it was clouded by my deep longing to be back home with the people I loved the most in life.  The magic that this place had once held for me was gone now that I wasn’t there with someone I loved.

            The month that I spent up there was one of the longest and hardest months of my life.  I was living comfortably, but I was not truly known or loved up there.  There was no one who I could really be myself around and it became exhausting walking on eggshells all the time.  That’s why I was so excited to see my mother at the end of that long, summer month.  I knew she loved me for who I was and that simple comfort had never meant more to me than it did when I stepped off of that plane and into her arms.  I was home.

            That trip taught me so many things about myself and what is really important in life.  I found a strength that I had never known I had and I realized that nothing in life can mean anything unless you are able to share it with someone you love.  I now see the value of living and being loved unconditionally and I have never been happier.