The Greatest Mistake: Excerpt I from {INSIGHTS} Vol. III
danielodowd
Here's an exclusive peak at an excerpt from {INSIGHTS} Vol. III, and please remember that your purchase helps us run theYCW for the 2017 year. You can claim your copy here. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of your support.
...But it was safe there. On the shore.
A few years after this, I received one of my most treasured texts from him:
If you could do anything in the world tonight, what would you do?
My 22 year old answer was what many would probably expect: get tipsy on the beach from coconut rum.
An hour later he was driving my car down the interstate through early March snow, our mountain telescoping in our rear view mirrors. He made this safe haven a literal place, but I wasn’t alone in that real life scenario that night. He was sitting next to me on the blanket, taking sips out of my thermos, our toes freezing but bare, and laughing at jokes we buried in the sand.
It felt like we were the only ones alive for miles, walking along the shore and bumping into each other because the mixture of the dunes, the rum, and the one o’clock hour made for less sound footing. He tried throwing me in the waves and I screeched and ran away laughing, and I remember being so simply happy. It was like a damn Nicholas Sparks novel. On the drive back, our tummies satisfied with diner food, I fell asleep on his arm.
Fast forward a few months later.
I slammed into a metaphysical wall and crashed and burned into this boundary. Panic attack, emotional breakdown, I’m sure there’s a term out there for it.
So when I laid there, dazed and perplexed and on my back from this wall that I hit, I found myself in the landlocked country of Uganda, right smack dab in the heart of Africa.
Caught. Cornered. That's when we're forced to face our fears and hear what may hurt. And though you can read more about my time in Africa in Volume II, Vol III shifts focus and shortly invites you to the coast in Costa Rica...