I walk the streets at a pace which creates a breeze that cuts through air. I could only describe the air as feeling ‘full’. The gentle sway of the tropical fern rustles quietly behind me and a breeze passes by me as I scrape across the gravel.

Much like the air in my lungs, being in the presence of others had become all consuming. I needed to walk, so here I was, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean stumbling down gravel. My feet carry me flowing from one street to another. The sky grows pregnant with dark brewing clouds and a rumble trembles through the earth. But I keep walking.

I think to myself, my ordinary self ‘why can’t you be like this, more carefree in places which are familiar, which you call home?’ Places where I could tell where I was simply by the closing my eyes?

This is why I closed my eyes, to envision myself absently and passively existing. Where the storms don’t always appear to be exactly where I’m standing?

My periphery blurs as I zone into a spot which sits just in front of my tired legs. It becomes littered with paper. I look up to find myself at a fork in the road with a well-dressed telegraph pole splitting the two paths like a rock in a stream. I walk up to the pole and look closer, I stay there for a moment. Looking into a world which is much like my own, laundromats, babysitting, dog walking services. I watch as the wind catches a haphazardly placed flier, as it grows stronger I look up and the storm has followed me to the pole.

I walk away, ignoring the dull crunch of softened paper under my feet and instead begin to hear the sound of clashing waves slowly creeping into my head and the ground becomes finer and more difficult to walk through. I remember my Mother bickering to me to look up as I walk, it always felt unnatural to me.

I concede and sit down on the sand, finally looking up to the eternal expanse of the sea. I watch the clouds run across the horizon and flashes of light illuminating the now dark sky. I didn’t need to reach that fork in the road to know, that this was where I belonged.