I felt this way after I finished Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I still feel that way, a week later. I think it is the On the Road of my twenties, even though On the Road is STILL the On the Road of my twenties. I just needed it. So much.
The book is a true story about a woman who hikes the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon-Washington border. She has no backpacking experience, and she does it all alone. Her one motivation is to get away from the life she fell into after her mother died from cancer in her early 40's.
I have a lot of role models. This planet is home to so many great people (so many more than I know..and all of them, probably, unless their is life on other planets), and I am honored to call a few of them my best friends. Some women have fantastic qualities I would like to possess. But the best kind of people are the ones who make you want to be a better person. Cheryl Strayed does this for me through her writing. She is my hero, and I do mean this in the traditional, superhero sense.
When I read her words, it's as if she sits inside my ripped open heart and keeps it from falling apart. She doesn't fix it. That she leaves to the reader. She just sits there and keeps it beating while I figure out a way to march onward and fix it, temporarily and permanently.
The image below is my journal entry after I finished the book. I planned to type it all out, but I didn't, so hooray for technology.
