By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
“Your hair! It’s so long now!” It’s the first thing Rachel said when she saw me eight months later, after I traded New York City for a farm in Sweden, Maine. “Is it?” “Um… yes?!” “Good long?” “Different long.” My hair is the only thing different from the person I am and the person I was before my brother died. How can I look so similar to her, the girl who didn’t know death? We have the same blue-grey eyes, the same wheat-colored hair, the same hands. But, my hair is longer now. Before the accident, I was like a blonde Zooey Deschanel, happy to play the manic pixie dream girl in my own fantasy. I went to parties. I flirted with boys. Friends told me I was happy. I believed them. When Alex died, a cavern cracked open inside of me— deep and dark and scary. Blonde Zooey Deschanel was D.O.A. I thought I could be one of those artists who turned their darkness into light, that I could beat grief into a 90-minute play with no intermission. I thought I could twist these weird, new feelings into something beautiful, into my greatest theatrical success, get some rave review from a respected downtown NYC theatre critic launching my career as a playwright. I wanted to tiptoe around the edges of the cavern, safe, and only peer inside. That’s not what happened. The cavern lip gave way, and I fell inside, encased in the darkness. I cancelled the play. I left New York. I broke my lease. I left my job. I found a farm in rural Maine I could volunteer at. But, my parents were (understandably) worried. They wanted me home in Ohio, in their care, not road tripping to some farm in Maine. And so, home I went. It was easier than arguing. At home, the cavern’s darkness grew around me. I was adrift without work, without the play, without blonde Zooey Deschanel to wear as a mask. I cried in locked bathrooms and staring up at the white ceiling of my childhood bedroom. Some days, I didn’t get up. Some days, I wandered the house like a haunting. I couldn’t see any way out. But, even in the thick, swirling darkness, I felt the tug to go. A quiet voice beckoned me away from Ohio. It was a month before I finally left, a month before I honored the voice telling me, “go darling.” When I first got in the car, I didn’t stop for 5 hours, quite a feat when you guzzle water the way I do. The call to leave had finally won, and it wanted to put a long stretch of road between the place I had come from and where I was going. The windows were down. I was singing Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” over the roaring wind. And, I was laughing. When I got to Maine, no one knew what my hair looked like when my brother died. No one knew my brother had died. They didn’t know my tears or my pain. I didn’t need them to. I dug my hands in the dirt. I fed a flock of ducks. I road-tripped to Acadia National Park and climbed the iron-rung trails. I watched the sun set in Portland. I began to heal. I didn’t fight the darkness. Instead, I let it embrace my jagged edges. Now, back in New York, I still have dirt beneath my nails. I still remember the sound of rain on the roof of my camper van home. I am the same. And, I am different. My hair is long.