I’m sitting on the patio of an Airbnb on an island in the Puget Sound with a homemade cardstock brochure in my hands. I open the first panel. It says, “Welcome to paradise. Take a deep breath. Let it go. You’ve made it.” I realize I am, indeed, not breathing.
I’m here on an impulse. I booked the room on my phone in bed that morning and got on a ferry in the early afternoon. As the host and I exchange introductions, he asks what I am planning to see on my visit, which trips me up a bit, since I wouldn’t have been able to remember the name of the town if he’d asked. “I just wanted to get out of the city,” I manage, in which he replies with a nod of knowing wisdom and spares me any further questioning.
The tour is finished and now I’m alone. My host has shown me how the T.V. remotes work and is now off to watch “the game” at a bar, fully entrusting the security of his home to me, a complete stranger, who could be an absolute sociopath. It’s a fascinating phenomenon; Airbnbs seem so risky as a concept, yet are somehow so unproblematic in reality.
The home is like any grandparents’ house – clean, quiet and cozy, filled with the kind of the items a family accumulates over a lifetime, and some that are a bit less conventional. There are two harps in the living room, a number of mini Hindu deities occupying various corners, crystals and feathers adorning the windowsills, and blue carpet on the walls of my bedroom.
I like these non-destinations, these hidden corners of the Northwest. Sure, you could say there isn’t much activity, or culture, or excitement around. But these are destinations for those of us that live in the city, the home of activity, culture and excitement… and early mornings, traffic, to-do lists and deadlines…
But it doesn’t take long in the car to snap out of the city’s magnetic pull. Once you’re half an hour out of orbit, it’s like it doesn’t exist.
And what time could better to escape than fall, when the summer sun disappears behind the permanently overcast sky, and workloads begin to build up. Students are buried neck deep in text books and adults are digging in their heels as they lurch unwillingly toward the end of another year. And the age group in between – us millenials – are entering another stage of our quarter-life crises.
With the house to myself, I make a cup of tea and walk outside and sit on the back patio, which looks out onto Miller Bay, one of the dozens of little basins in the Olympic Peninsula. The scene is stunning. It’s like something from Twin Peaks. The water is dancing silently as it reflects a midday gray October sky. On the other side of the bay, houses can be seen peaking out of the thick pine, creating a dark perimeter around the enclosement of water, which only breaks briefly to open to the Sound, off to the right.
There is no wind. Or rain. Or sun. As I warm my hands on my mug of tea, I observe the calm of my surroundings and try to bring my mind down to the same level.
I’ve “made it.” I’m “breathing.” I know why I’m here, and at the same time, I don’t.
I’ve been trying to open myself to something, but I don’t know what. I’m looking and listening, but I can’t hear anything but the cry of some far away hysterical seagull, which in this moment, I humorlessly commiserate with.
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This experience is familiar.
Last fall, I made a few similar “non-destination” Airbnb trips – showing up to different homes with an overnight bag and shyly avoiding the friendly hosts who want to know what I’m doing in town.
I’m not really sure what I’m looking for on these trips. I sit alone in bars and coffee shops and watch regulars go about their routines, their exchanges with bartenders and baristas, their lamentations with their neighbors, as I relish my anonymity.
And there is something about sleeping in a different bed, in someone’s safe home, with unfamiliar quilts and cats and coffee cups – something about feeling like a wary traveler, even if it’s just pretend.
I moved from Portland, the only place I’ve ever lived, to Seattle ten months ago. Unlike many of the post-college millennials who found themselves moving to Seattle for a job offer at one of the city’s colossal tech firms, my move was a leap of faith without an actual catalyst. That’s not to say I didn’t have a net beneath me. I had the support of my family who would make sure that I didn’t end up living out of my car. But it was a risk, leasing an apartment in a city I’d only visited a couple times as a kid, where I knew no one, without a serious lead on a job or a real plan.
It was a leap as much into the future as it was away from my past, my headspace and my habits. It was a chance to shake up my life like a snow globe – to try to loosen my long-cemented ideas about who I was and what I liked, since those principles didn’t seem to be helping me out of the ever-pulling depressive sinkhole that I found myself in.
I’m proud of the progress that I’ve made in these ten months. I’ve let myself open up to ideas that go against my long held self-imposed crusades – most prominently, the idea that taking care of yourself is for boring, self-indulgent douchebags. Prying my fingers off of that post-teenage ideology has actually been easier than I thought. Perhaps I was ready.
But shedding those layers of identity isn’t like breaking from a cocoon and emerging a beautiful butterfly. There is a surprising sense of loss in letting go of the things that make you you. At least when I had an identity – even if it was unhealthy and flawed – it was an identity, a sense of pride, a personal brand, if you will.
I’ve traded my evening routine of hanging out at dive bars and listening to the unique, usually sad stories of strangers, for meditative yoga classes and a gym membership. I’ve begun stocking my fridge with ingredients for green breakfast smoothies instead of the mysteriously sourced bacon from Grocery Outlet. I’ve swapped my Big Gulp-of-Diet-Coke-a-morning addiction for plain old sparking water with a slice of lemon. But it’s not without a sense of melancholy, because a big part of me adores those things, in spite of the fact that they are vices. Those vices defined me – even if it was in a negative way, they did.
The more layers I shed, the more my identity fades away. To utilize a fitting cliché, I’m a blank canvas. I’ve got a bucket of tubes of paint and tools, but I don’t know what colors to use or what brush to use, or which brush to use with which paint type, or even the first thing about how to paint. And I don’t want to ruin this fresh, white canvas.
I’m sitting in the living room now. It’s Sunday morning. The sunrise is breaking over the water and illuminating the crystals and wood paneling and golden deities. I’ve just met Brenda, the female half of my Airbnb host family. I am sure she is responsible for the curation of this wacky, beautiful home. It’s 8 a.m. and she’s in full make-up and a robe, addressing me across the room with a natural, full volume as she floats around her blissful kitchen.
I have no vision right now. I started this journey ten months ago, and it still feels like I’ve yet to touch my brush to the canvas, like all this time I’ve just been unraveling a ridiculous knot and now that I finally have, I’ve only just reached the beginning of my journey.
But Brenda seems okay – she’s more than okay; Brenda has made it. She has a house on Miller Bay and two grandchildren and two harps and two tan leather sofas and an appreciation for Eastern philosophy. If she can manifest this lovely little universe in this beautiful, gray rain forest town, maybe I can hope to do the same.
My host has just generously served me a green smoothie. I stare into its lumpy texture as I drink, upholding my end of the blind-trust relationship between Airbnb host and guest – that they trust me alone in their home, and I trust them to serve me a roofie-free beverage.
This all gives me a warm feeling of hope – the sunrise and the smoothie and the bright crystals surrounding me. I still have no idea what I’m doing and where to begin. No direction to go but forward.