ever since childhood, something strange used to happen to me. the older I grew, the more I realised it wasnt something everyone experienced... before every long family road trip, I found myself infinitely more excited about the stopovers rather than the destination itself.
over time, the same feeling began to creep into shorter journeys—even a trip to the grocery store. Assuming this was universal made me indifferent to its existence, and in that indifference, I unknowingly began using these places as anchors to hold onto my personality.
because what even are we at a forgotten mcdonalds in the middle of 100km highway?
A stopover is a place that owes me nothing. It knows neither my name nor my history. It is where I arrive socially naked, stripped of every title, friendship, expectation and memory that constitute major traits of my identity. A clean slate.
i've always seen these places as the architectural equivalent of stepping into a changing room inside of a crowded shopping mall. the world exists just beyond the curtain, yet for a fleeting moment, i'm alone. how do I stand when nobody is looking? how do I truly behave when there is no audience to reinforce the person I've become accustomed to performing? Every action inside that room belongs only to that room; environmentally sealing my habits and thoughts while posture become artifacts of that isolated space. A tiny universe detached from the narrative of my life.
that was where I first learned to observe the indifference.
and through that indifference, I began to see the destination.
only much later did I realise that college had quietly become exactly that. Not the destination, but the stopover.
a place suspended between two versions of myself. Not home anymore, but not yet wherever life ultimately intends to take me. a liminal space whose purpose isn't to be remembered for permanence, but for transformation. a place where identities are tried on and discarded like clothes inside that same changing room. where friendgroups are temporary civilisations, opinions are provisional, ambitions mutate every semester,
and every version of me dies quietly enough that only I notice the funeral.
perhaps that's why I treasure it more than whatever destination waits beyond it.
destinations ask you to arrive as someone.
while the stopovers allowed me to become someone.
there is a comfort here that permanence could never let me experience. headache inducing EST mornings as I sip sugarless black coffee in the mess, shivering into oblivion while the hangover of the past week hits all at once. debating into sleepless nights while defending the weaker argument simply because I believed criticism, by its very nature, is constructive. wandering through conversations with people I may never meet again, knowing that, somehow, that makes them more honest instead of less.
this place taught me what those highway stopovers had been trying to teach me all along.
that identity is never discovered at the destination.
it is assembled in the places that were never meant to be home, but tried their very best nevertheless.
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