Long day’s end.

I pulled into my driveway after a long day. Well, a long week. Although I guess it was still only Thursday.

It was late—at least after 6. But winter was over, so the sky was still bright. The sun still hung in the pale blue sky. But the technical lateness of the hour still weighed on my shoulders like my periwinkle backpack—which was stuffed that day with so many books that it’s a miracle I never toppled over.

It was supposed to have been a normal day. Funny how a day can start to fall apart so late. All’s good until bam, you learn something you don’t fully understand and are left with more questions than answers. A whole day forgotten in place of one moment. This time, it was about a person. Someone I didn’t know so well, then turned out I didn’t really know at all.

I turned off my car, but didn’t get out. I just sat there, in the silence. I tried to tune out the shrill, staticky hum of my tinnitus but that only made it louder. Anxiety weighed on my chest like a wet T-shirt—slimy and clingy and darker than before.

I sighed, hands still on the wheel. I stared out my windshield, at my front door.

I didn’t want to go home.

Too many distractions.

The thought of going inside filled my skin with ants. Like that time I stood in the garden of my childhood home, my bare feet pressed against the soil. I was talking over the chainlink fence to my neighbor, who was around my kindergarten age. I don’t remember what we were talking about. But I remember the tingling, nervous feeling running up and down from my toes to my knees. I remember looking down and seeing that I was suddenly wearing black knee socks, except the threads of these were moving.

This was like that, from head to toe.

Now, I like my townhouse. Clearly I call it home. There’s nothing wrong with it.

But as much as I love it in there, it loomed ahead of me like a cage that night. Suddenly it had too many walls. Too many rooms. Too many things—so crowded, so narrow. I could picture the walls closing in on me like the Death Star’s trash compactor. And beyond the space itself, there were too many things inside. Too many distractions.

I sighed, scrunching my lip as I frowned at the front steps. For once, I didn’t want to be distracted. I didn’t want to step inside like I was hitting the quicksave button in a video game. I couldn’t make a “checkpoint” when I felt this way—when everything inside me was screaming for me to leave. With the angst rolling in my gut, and the questions floating on the surface of my brain like crunchy-dead leaves in an old pond. I stared at the phone clipped to my dash. I was waiting for an answer to a specific question… I didn’t know if I’d get the text that night or in the morning. I decided maybe it was best not to think about it.

Walk away.

I got out of my car. Pressed the “lock” key until I heard it honk. It was nice out—cool with a breeze. The first truly warm day in a long time. Low 70s.

I turned, looking to the right across my rubbly driveway and down the little green hill into my friend Alli’s smoother, more intact driveway. Her car was there, parked close to the house. Empty concrete sat beyond the car, beyond the house.

That seemed a better option. Maybe I could process before the text came—before my question was answered, before the verdict hit.

I crossed over to her driveway, leaving my house behind.

I sat on the cool ground and leaned back—all the way back, until I was lying with my face turned up to the blue sky. I closed my eyes and let the sun soothe me and paint squiggly shapes on the insides of my eyelids.

Long talk.

Alli came out to join me. I don’t remember if I asked her to or if she just saw me lying dead in her driveway, but either way she came and sat beside me.

And we just talked.

We talked about big things, small things, funny things, sad things. Our days, our struggles, whatever.

There was a sort of buzz beneath the conversation. Like a nervous stomach fighting a Tums. Alli knew as much as I did about that person—that person I turned out not to know very well at all. We both had no answers yet. Both were waiting.

Then I got a text.

It’s like the air grew stiller.

I read it aloud and we just sat there. The words formed that special kind of answer that doesn’t feel real. Like when a loved one dies, and at first you just can’t wrap your head around it. We paused. We prayed. We paused some more.

And though the answer felt distant to me—washed out and faded like an old pair of socks—the world tilted. Just slightly, like a painting gone off center.

Unplugged.

But beyond the tilt, there was a peace in that driveway. Looking back, I see why.

I wasn’t alone.

And I wasn’t inside.

And that might not seem like a big deal. Inside, outside—what’s it matter?

I think it’s one of those things you don’t notice until it happens.

I live a lot of my life in my head. “Inside,” per se. I have a lot of walls and a lot of little shiny, pretty things to distract me. There aren’t a lot of windows in there, either, and the air doesn’t flow so well.

But when I nudge myself into opening up—into stepping into my community, even if it’s just a conversation with one other person—it’s really like stepping outside. I’m no longer in my head, and I’m no longer trapped in my feelings. Suddenly I can breathe the air, feel the breeze, and feel the warm concrete under my palms.

There’s something so special about moments like those. Unplugged—both from screens and from my own little hall of mirrors. There’s something different about feeling the ground beneath you and the breeze around you. The smells, the sun, the tangibility of creation.

Opening up seemed so easy, with the sky so big above me. With the air so crisp and clear. No walls, no ceilings, no distractions.

Just two friends talking, sitting in a driveway. Alli and actually talked until after the sun set.

And when I finally went home, I was calm and refreshed, reassured that there was something beyond my walls, both literally and figuratively.

There are two wonders here that really go hand in hand:

You are not alone.

Your house is not your world.

So when I need to get out of my head, I get out of my house. I let time slow down for a bit as I just breathe the outdoor air, and stare at the sky without a plan. A good friend, a long conversation, a concrete driveway. Things can be so uncomplicated, even when it feels like parts of your life are unravelling.

Things can be so uncomplicated when you just leave your walls behind.

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