A Journey

She stood alone on the empty platform, watching the minutes tick away on the electronic display. She pulled her coat more tightly around her as a train pulled up at the other platform. It pulled away to reveal a single passenger departing, towing a small, black, wheeled suitcase. He headed straight for the gate to the carpark without a backward glance.
         A pair of distant white lights flared toward her platform at last, promising an end or sorts to her solitary vigil. Ever slowing, eventually it stopped in front of her. She sidled along to the door, pressed the flashing ‘open’ button, and boarded the train.
         Heading down the nearly-empty carriage, she slid into a seat at the centre of a window. She wanted plenty of space to watch the world go by. The train pulled away, she folded her arms across her coat, and stared out at the passing suburbs.

She wondered, yet again, why she was making this journey. She was heading for a new place, a new life. And that was exciting. And terrifying. The joy of the new and the grief for the old were all mixed up together, in a complicated knot she was not sure she would ever untangle.
         Beyond the window, the streetlights and unimaginative brick houses had gone, to be replaced by flat fields and narrow hedgerows.
         She thought back to the place she was leaving. It had been a place of safety. A familiar place where she was known. A place of happy memories. A place where there were other people, people she knew, people she cared about, who could help her to pick up the pieces. It had been her home for so long.
         But things had changed. All the security, all the self-assurance, all the happy memories were now tainted with things she could not shake off. Things that had happened could never be undone. The safe haven wasn’t what it once was.

The train pulled in to her stop. She stepped out onto a windy station, and walked towards the stairs to check the board. Carrying on to the opposite platform, and glancing jealously at the coffee bar, she waited for the next train. This would take her on to her destination. Looking once again at the board, it was tempting just to step onto a different train and go right back to where she had just come from. But it was too late for that. Things change, the world kept turning, and it was no use dreaming of how things used to be. It was time to move on. She boarded her train, shuffled into a seat, not bothering to consult her reservation, and stared out once again.

A new life, however much effort it seemed at first, was actually an exciting prospect. There were new rooms to fill, new shops to find, new streets to learn. There were new places to explore, new ideas to try, new friends just waiting to be made. She could turn herself into a whole new person and no one would know. She could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. And that was exhilarating and liberating. There would be no one to answer to.
         It was properly dark outside now. The reflections of the seats on the inside of the windows prevented her from seeing much but a few yellow street lamps in the distance. When she arrived the new place would be a mystery, only revealed in the morning.
         No one to answer to but herself. You could run away from things and run towards things, but you could never run from yourself. You could try to leave the baggage behind, but you would still have to live with you. She knew this. It was a source of both despair and hope. Despair of getting rid of things she could never forget. But hope and comfort that however much things changed and wherever she went, the same person would still be inside her. It was something to hold on to.

As the train slowed into her final station, she felt a mixture of relief and regret that this journey was at an end. While she was travelling, there were no decisions to be made, nothing she should be doing. Life was simple. She was running from some things, and running into others. But the running was over, if it would ever be truly over, and she stepped from the train, fastening her coat, ready to start a new life. In the morning the world would look a different place.