I stood starring through the train as it clicked past the platform and I thought to myself, "What in the world am I doing?"
All of my possessions, minus the travel backpack in the compartment to my left, remained in a storage complex in the city I left behind. My best friend Sam had tried to talk me out of leaving for the past two months. She did not win the argument. I was on an adventure to discover the history of myself.
My view no longer was the busy city streets that never seemed to have a moments rest. My eyes now gazed upon the rolling hills of Switzerland checkered with vineyards and houses built centuries ago.
At last I could breathe. The air was fresh. No longer clogging my lungs and my mind with smog of exhaust and fast approaching deadlines.
"I'm really here." I said to myself. "No turning back now."
My best friend wasn't the only one who tried to talk me out of leaving. After my dad suddenly died of a ruptured pulmonary valve six months ago, I found out that the man who had raised me for all of my life (or as long as I could remember), was not actually my biological father.
Turns out my mom had been on a little adventure when she was in her twenties. She had traveled the world with her best friend for six months after she graduated from college. They had been friends since they were kids and decided that it would be safer to travel together than by themselves. Their friends had already accepted positions pertaining to their degrees, made other vacation plans, and could not afford to be gone for six months.
I had found out more about my mom since my dad had passed away than I ever could have imagined to be true. The life she had led me to believe that she lived during the years she was my age were in fact so far from reality that it was shocking to me.
My mom had painted herself as a proper Christian woman with high unwaivering morals. I had often referred to my mother as a prude when bad mouthing her to my friends.
The truth was quite the contrary. She had been running from the Lord during her college years as she fell into the temptations of the world and found them much more appealing than the uptight, condemning ways she had been brought up.
Her social life kept her out all night and was filled with numerous boyfriends and experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
She was now a leader in our church, teaching bible studies and occasionally speaking at womens meetings.
There were many things unraveling about this woman in my life. It was as if the picture of my mother had been out of focus all these years and slowly she was beginning to adjust the lens and let her whole picture be seen. The shadows in the background and the lines of trials were becoming more apparent day by day.
How was I to know that her past would forever alter my future?
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