Nomad Chronicles, The Eighth Track: Cleansed By An Abyss

 As soon as I started the car, and prepared to back out, the living room lights came on, I didn't want to say goodbye because it's never comfortable. 

 It was still as dark as the depths of space looming over the sky of a living world which was very much asleep, but the shock of seeing a deer in the street covering in the embrace of a nocturnal mist was still fresh in my mind. I was still grateful that I didn't hit the deer and so I was taking it easy as I drove to my first stop, the gas station.

 I saw a semi-familiar face behind the counter, this guy had worked many shifts where I came to get energy drinks before. He was still unenthusiastic in his work, and it made perfect sense because who wants to work behind the counter of a gas station at five in the morning?

 The darkness felt like it lasted forever, as it always had in Arkansas. Somehow it always felt like night time, only on rare occasions did I look out my window and see unabashed daylight. As soon as I was out of the city I wanted to go fast, I knew that it would be a long drive and I knew that there would be delays. Overall it was a smooth drive, truckers only boxed me in twice and they quickly realized what they were doing. The drive through Oklahoma itself was equally smooth, it came and went with the early afternoon.

 I feel like Texas gets a lot of undeserved hate, and I wanted to keep that to a minimum in wanderings in and around Texas. With that in mind, I got another cracked windshield from Texas's wonderful highway system. Katy, Texas itself felt a lot like Jacksonville, Florida in that it was a bunch of smaller cities linked together by a highway but the traffic was so much worse. Plenty of trucks in Texas have horsepower, but in the words of Jim Carey there was nowhere to gallop.

 My new host didn't live on site, rather her mother would be living in and maintaining the house, she was an older Vietnamese lady who was very sweet. On my first day she offered me food several times and asked about my travels. In the living room was what I could only describe as a gargantuan alter dedicated to Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit with pictures of the family on the alter and lights hanging behind the cross. As was usually the case, the room was bigger than the post on Air BnB implied and I was really happy that they'd set up a desk for me to work and the door to the bathroom was right by my desk. This was going to be a very comfortable month for me.

 Only three days after I'd checked into my new place, I received a message from a friend that I'd been missing for two months and I was very happy to hear that her life had improved as well. Finally my funk was over for a time.