Young Holly had met a man named Harman, from the Netherlands, in the city of Grand Junction, Colorado. The name of the city perfectly framed the friendship that began between the two of them. It was Harman who gave Young Holly his copy of the book The Little Prince while they journeyed together.
By Holly Herring
Did you know that Siddhartha, The Little Prince and I have a lot in common?
Young Holly experienced some homelessness back in the day. She had a rotten childhood home and flew the coop to save herself. Young Holly really had no idea what she was doing and she was too young to be in the world on her own. Yet, Young Holly did not give a flying fig about that part because the family “home” was a torture chamber.
Young Holly took to wandering.
At first, she wandered locally. What began as wandering the East San Francisco Bay in general, soon turned into stepping onto an Amtrak train headed East. Young Holly spent a great deal of time looking out the window at the landscapes. At stops, she would get off the train and walk around town. During the nights she found herself sitting in silence, often deep in thought about the life and people she had left behind.
Young Holly already had a PTSD diagnosis. She re-lived scary experiences often and was unable to cope in healthy ways—because nobody had ever taught her how. A doctor had prescribed her large quantities of these pills, benzodiazepines. Since it was a doctor who prescribed them, young Holly trusted this was the right treatment.
She stared out the train window. She stared at cityscapes. She stared at corn fields. She stared a lot and spoke very little.
Holly took that train everywhere for about a year.
Sometimes she’d get off the train and stay somewhere for a while. She explored cities all over the country, mostly alone, in silence but deep in thought. About 15 months after she first stepped on her first train in Oakland, she stepped on a Greyhound bus in Tampa Florida—headed West.
Young Holly spent a couple weeks on her bus trip, stopping to explore on her way through the southern states, into Los Angeles, then North to San Jose, California. There had been no real goals set for this adventure, yet Young Holly achieved a few things.
Young Holly had met a man named Harman, from the Netherlands, in the city of Grand Junction, Colorado. The name of the city perfectly framed the friendship that began between the two of them. It was Harman who gave Young Holly his copy of the book The Little Prince while they journeyed together.
Late at night the two would huddle close together, sharing warmth in the cold darkness, to talk about the story. Young Holly identified with the Little Prince who left his home planet and an erratic rose, whom he loved, to travel to all the planets.
This was a long journey.
A hard journey.
A dangerous journey.
An illegal journey.
A necessary journey.
Young Holly, with her copy of The Little Prince, arrived one day at a Greyhound bus station in downtown San Jose, late at night.
It was a mistake. She hadn’t intended to travel to San Jose and she was out of money to go any further.
Young Holly sat outside a record shop that had a large, plaster RCA Dog by the locked door. A man walking by casually dropped two dollar bills in her general direction without making eye contact or even slowing down.
Young Holly looked up and noticed she was within walking distance of a bus station where the 180 Express bus picked up passengers for the straight shot to the Fremont Bart station. Young Holly took that as her sign that she should return to the spot her journey began.
Full circle.
Holly had learned important lessons in her journey.
She could be all alone in a crowd.
She could learn from strangers and yet have no real connection.
She learned to expect to leave people and places.
Young Holly never returned to her erratic rose on her home planet. The long journey to visit other planets, to cuddle with a boy who shared his book with her, gave her the ability to disconnect permanently from the dangers of ever returning home again. Young Holly learned how to enjoy solitude and how to take lessons from brief interactions with strangers. She learned about impermanence and letting go.
Young Holly chose to remain homeless once she was back where her journey had begun.
She still needed to learn how to be herself, finally, without influence. Young Holly was finally really free and, in a way, safer than she ever had been before. Young Holly still needed to get to know her PTSD diagnosis and get familiar with how her body and mind reacted to symptoms, and she needed to do that while roaming in the spaces that felt free and safe to her.
Both Young Holly and Grown up Holly would think often about Siddhartha Gautama leaving his home one night to wander around seeing the rest of the world around him as it really was, meeting new teachers, taking on new teachings. He learned to detach and he became enlightened on his own in the end.
At times, Young Holly tried a homeless shelter or a treatment center. Ultimately, those interventions were not what worked for her. Once she experienced life with her symptoms in an environment she felt was safe for her, she was ready to return to settled life. This could not be rushed, there were no shortcuts. Points of interest on a long journey needed to be experienced first hand.
There are those who learn by doing, others by seeing, some by hearing. Siddhartha, The Little Prince, and Young Holly needed to experience the journey before the enlightenment could come.
Choosing homelessness, even when a home and family were available, we blazed our own trails. We met strangers on our journeys and we tried new things, but in the end—we found salvation in our own way—and that’s A-OK.
Photo: Pixabay
Editor: Dana Gornall
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