The Girl on the Train

She got on a train after getting lost in the train station. The Shinjuku Station is probably the biggest and the most complicated station ever created. It is a maze. She walked from her hotel, passed by the Takashimaya Times Square, and joined the flurry. At first, she didn’t know where to go. But she remembered she just needed to get on the green train that runs around all of Tokyo and makes a stop in Shibuya.

But because she was traveling alone, she couldn’t wrap her head around the directions.

Yes, she was traveling alone to Tokyo. She decided that it’s a city where she could lug her emotional luggage around without anyone judging her.

Tokyo is where one can get lost in and find herself. There is a sense of privacy in the middle of crowds. There is space to think in the middle of chaos. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

It’s a city where she could be one nameless, faceless person going about her life.

So, this afternoon, while looking at the ticket counter in senseless Japanese, she had the brilliant idea to press the English button. And that was how she got her ticket, passed through the gates, and landed on a train going to Shibuya.

Shinjuku. She found a seat and found comfort in the silence inside the train. Everyone was minding his own business. She thought about her father and how he taught her Japanese words at a young age. Her father loved Japan and spoke of how magnificent the Tokyo Station Dome was and how she should visit when she was older. Her father passed away two years ago.

Yoyogi. There was a brief stop in Yoyogi and her thoughts were interrupted briefly. Once the train was running, her thoughts did, too. She thought about her husband who was the first person she traveled to Tokyo with and there were just so many memories. Her husband loved Tokyo and loved figuring out the train destinations. She suddenly missed him. He passed away last year.

Harajuku. It was when she reached Harajuku that she thought she needed to say goodbye to the two men in her life, one who shaped her childhood, and the other one her adulthood. She needed to let them both go. She needed to say goodbye to everything that was sad and complicated and painful. She did. And whatever she had been carrying in her heart somehow lifted.

Shibuya. As the train started running from Harajuku, the girl realized that there was one person she needed to let go. She needed to let go of her old self, the one who went through both losses and their aftermath, the girl who was suddenly overwhelmed with grief she didn’t know how to be happy again. To be a new person, she needed to let go.

So, she said goodbye to her old self, too. It was a gift of a thought, and it was as sudden as the train stopping.

She left the girl on the train, stepped out and joined the scramble in Shibuya.

Xoxo,

B