THE REBUILD

“Conversion vans for sale.”

Once I typed those four words into Craigslist from a coffee shop outside Portland, Oregon, there was really no going back.

I didn’t want to admit it then, of course. Even though I felt the telltale tightening in my chest brought on by stress, and the tiredness burning behind my eyelids from too many restless nights, I told myself the obvious lie that I was just curious about what camper vans were going for these days. Field research. What I couldn’t say yet was that, just like the massive crack across the windshield of the camper we shared, my well-intentioned partner and I had let too many things go for too long, unaddressed, without giving proper care to them. And for so long: I needed to make decisions without him. I needed to know what life on the road would look like if I was the only one behind the steering wheel.