The Parking Lot Walk.

It's the strangest thing when you really think about it.  All I was doing was simply walking to my car.  I had called my mom so I wouldn't have to walk alone in the dark.  But I wasn't alone.  Not at all in fact.

I was surrounded by the celebrating high school masses.  Surrounded by average high school students who had just arrived from the State Championship basketball semis game.  They were exuberant. They were excited.

I was walking...simply walking.  It seemed like I had parked forever away as I tried to muffle my sobs. I limped past the other average students walking to their cars.  I stifled the scream that I wanted to yell out for the world to hear.

It was surreal, to put it simply.  There I was, walking to my car, barely able to carry the shattered pieces of my broken heart, and everyone else kept strolling by.  My fear for a year had come to face me, and it came true.

Have you ever had a walk like this?  A walk where you look around through your blurry, tear-filled eyes and feel that moment where you are above it?  Where you are no longer a typical person, but rather someone who is hurting.  Someone who has risen above the hazy rosiness of the cheerful life, to something a little darker.  Where you understand everything a little bit better than everyone else.

I got in my car, put my head on my steering wheel and sobbed.  In the dome light of the car, anyone could have seen me.  I doubt anyone did.  If they did, they probably thought I was tired.  Or laughing.  Maybe they thought I was crying.  Who knows.  Yet, they just kept strolling to their cars, in their own little bubble.

Soon my steering wheel was covered in snot, due to my lack of tissues, and it sounded like there was a dying hyena in the jeep, due to my cold and my sobs.

I learned a lot on that hundred meter walk.  That parking lot walk.