"Lonely" is Relative

There's always something about sleeping somewhere unfamiliar.

Yes, I know. Gasp, Amanda's updating. Isn't she in Basic?

Well, no, actually. Terrifically awful weather meant that we got stuck in Blue Earth overnight. For anyone outside of Minnesota, it's a two-hotel town with a giant statue of the Green Giant (because we're weird like that), so named for the clay in the soil. Or something like that. I am actually amazed at Petty Officer Wilson's ability to drive in whiteout conditions, but at some point we had to pull over and get gas. While we were in town, they closed the Interstate on us.

I won't get into the adventures that followed, but I will say that it's the second time in two days that my butt's been saved by a random farmer showing up and having the right tool for the job. I am resolved both that my future vehicles will all be trucks (unless I have more kids than sense), and I now view random helpful farmers the way everyone in the shelter seems to view me for joining.

I haven't DONE anything, and they're all thanking me. What's up with that?

Anyway, so both hotels were of course filled. There's a center downtown where they had space, pillows, and cots. I got to sleep in the library, which made me happy. In the middle of all kinds of stress, there's something very comforting about the smell of books.

So, I bed myself down on a very talkative cot amid such lasting tomes as "My First Atlas" and "Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake," and watch the shadows play from the streetlights in the swirling snow outside my window. Similar sight to another bed I used to sleep in, with a streetlight just outside my window that never turned off, and the wind blowing by there. I'm back in my dorm at Sheridan, another night when Ashley won't be back until late the next morning, and sleeping in an unfamiliar place. Not just sleeping in an unfamiliar place, but sleeping in a town where nobody knows you. This isn't crashing at a friend's house. This is that there's really no one out there who knows you well for at least a hundred miles, or in the case of Sheridan, 800. It's a delicious feeling of adventure, and it's also terrifyingly lonely. What if no one ever gets to know you? What if you're always adrift like this?

My bogeyman doesn't hide under the bed. He leaves a note telling me he'll be back in Spring, and abandons me to the night.

I'd always fall asleep, eventually, but it would be uneasy. At some point, this great guy I knew mailed me a stuffed puppy, and I proceeded to fall asleep with the fuzzball every night. Yep, I was twenty-one, and having a stuffed animal made me feel less alone. I'm afraid he got rather squashed over time.

Two houses down from mine (or a house and a hall), there was a guy who played soccer on the school team, and had way too much interest in longboarding. And somehow the two of us started hanging out all the time. And somehow, we got to know each other on a deeper level than anyone had ever known either of us. And he turned out to be a pretty cool guy. Turned out, you can sleep just fine at night, knowing you've got one good friend in town who will always be there for you.

And weirdly, even though it's a lot colder and less comfortable in the shelter than Davis House ever managed to be, the notion that the same solid friend is out there and will always be there for me made the difference in getting to sleep.