Life is freaking hard. And honestly nobody told me it would be anything like this, or if they did, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t listening. During one of my hardest periods of time I found comfort in a complete stranger and he taught me more than anybody has in my life, and the biggest hitch, he never said a word.

I couldn’t tell you what it was about him, but the moment he walked through the door he caught my eye. He was different, not the kind of guy I was used to seeing and me being weird automatically made up his whole life story. I would see him around every now and then and every time I gave him a new section to his little biography that was inside my head. By the end of it, I secretly loved this fictional character that I made for this man and this character taught me everything that changed my life. The boy and his skinny little jeans, baggy t-shirt, and curly crazy hair were my inspiration. I wasn’t really in love with him, but I was in love with the life I made up for him. I wanted that kind of life.

I use to think there was a straight forward plan to follow in order to have a good life. Go to school, be a good daughter/friend/person, get a high paying job, find a boy and boom the pieces will fall in place and your puzzle is made, easy right? Well, I tried this and I was an epic fail and felt pretty screwed. You always hear that these four years of your life will be the best time you’ll ever have, which I was definitely not feeling. I was stressed with school and my future and really, I lost sight of why I was even here. I was going through the steps that everybody is “suppose to do”. But the second I saw this man my view of life was completely changed and although I haven’t yet found myself he made my path easier to see. There is much more to life than just walking through steps and surviving. I live in Indiana, and I love my home state, but there is so much more out there. I want to wake up with the soft coolness of morning mist on my body, the sand blanketing over my buried toes, and the salt water crashing along the stones revealing a sliver of the rising sun. I want to walk for miles and miles until I’m standing literally on top of the world. I want to experience first-hand every culture and become connected with every different person. I want to live my dreams and wake up every morning knowing that I’m uncontrollably happy and I'm making a difference in this beautiful world. And I think everybody should feel that. I hate to be a this huge walking cliché but it is just the truth, there’s so much more out there, so much better, and looking in his pure eyes made me see that.

The way he stood tall with good posture but it still looked so flimsy, like he was on top of the world, but at the same time had no clue what he was doing. He came off to be so easy going and lovely, the kind of person who literally makes peoples day just by saying hi. But I think the thing that will stick with me the most was the way he stood outside sometimes to smoke a cigarette and just watched the world around him in amazement. I wanted to have that amazement in my surroundings. This is what made me really think about what’s out there and what I can do with it, what I should be doing with it.

All the sudden the tiniest things began to stick out to me; one phrase in a song, a peek of exposed brick, a pattern in the clouds, a faded old sign, literally anything meant everything to me. And just like that my dreams felt a lot more meaningful. I began to do the things that I loved. I began writing, singing more, and traveling more. I now, more than ever, understand that everybody has this extremely beautiful story behind their life and I want to know it. I now see the beauty in things that I thought were irrelevant, just because the way this man stared into space while smoking a cigarette. And then the he got up from his metal wired chair and walked down the street, and I realized that in my lost wandering way it was time for me to get up and start living.