There were five million, seven hundred, sixty-two reasons no to go: I have too much work, the weather’s going to be bad, I think I’m coming down with something; and yet, despite the plethora of excuses, none of them included the phrase: “I don’t want to go.” The truth was I did want to go. But I couldn't. The knot in my stomach told me so. Its voice was strong, stern, stemmed in logic and morality. If you go, you know very well what would happen. And, as much as I tried to convince myself that this was different, that I wouldn’t do what I’d normally do, I guess deep down I knew the knot was right. This time was different, but isn’t that what I said every time before? Before. I don’t speak of the before. The knot doesn’t either.

    The backpack sat packed in the corner of the room. It was full of everything that I didn’t need: expectations and butterflies. We were leaving in two hours. We’d catch the five-fifteen bus and go as far away as we could from the gray walls, gray streets, gray skies. We’d pitch a tent beneath a bristlecone pine where we’d etch our initials as evidence we walked upon this Earth. Come nightfall, we’d curl up beside glowing embers, not speaking but understanding everything. I couldn’t find an excuse good enough to say no.

    My parents were getting divorced in the fall. Surely that was reason in itself not to go. I grew watching love blossom, beautiful and pure at the moment, only to wilt away and die. The sun shines now and you say when it goes down we will start a fire. But soon that fire, like all fires, will stop burning, extinguishing itself into a thick, suffocating smoke. I’m afraid of the dark.

    I don’t want to get lose. That must be understandable. We have no maps, no compass, no way of knowing where we are or where we’re going. The woods will be empty. We can ask no one for directions. How can I be sure we’ll survive? You tell me to trust you, and I do. It is myself I do not trust.

    What if we never get there? What if fate takes control and the bus takes the wrong route? What if we take the wrong bus? What if we miss the bus entirely? There are too many chances I don’t want to take. Not now, not ever.

But, as the time approached, I still couldn’t find a suitable reason not to go. That itself was reason enough to silence the knot, reach for the backpack, and blindly follow the sidewalk I trusted to lead me safely to you.