Tonight I was reminded that it’s lonely on the road.


I woke up from a nap feeling like I had nowhere to go. I slurped the moisture from my mouth as I became conscious of the TV that was left on when I laid down and hour earlier. I was still in my slacks and blouse, jewelry and lipstick. It was nearly 7:30. Disoriented and tired I sat up and felt a swell of indistinguishable emotion well up in my throat. I’m in Minneapolis. What restaurants do I know of? I’m at the Doubletree. Around the corner there’s Brit’s, an English pub. There’s beer and shepherd’s pie- mediocre food, perfect for a mediocre trip.

I forced my feet to the carpet and pushed down on the floor. The result was the rising of my body to a full standing position. Dragging my feet to my suitcase, I chose a pair of comfy army pants and a super soft long-john T-shirt. It was a deviation from my day time business battle-wear but I changed into it anyway and made it to the elevator, down to the lobby and out onto the street. Just outside the hotel rotating door I turned to my right and started walking.

Three buildings from my hotel tears welled up in the basins of my eyes like allergies coming on strong. I was about to have dinner all by myself, on a gloomy day in Minnesota, at the end of a difficult work day and on my fifth week in a row on the road. I was feeling the middle class homelessness that work travel elicits. Usually, the world feels like my family. I can slip in anywhere and feel like I’m at home. Like I belong to the things I’m watching. Like the hostess, or the bellman, or the taxi driver and I have been friends forever. Tonight I felt like the evening was a grave yard and the people I was passing on the street and sharing a restaurant with were animated head stones; each representing a life but not much more than a name and a date. They didn’t care about me and I didn’t care about them.

Loneliness is what my non-traveling friends never think I feel. “Wow, you’re going where? I don’t know how you do it. Jet setter!” I keep a smile and expect that the next trip will yield some kind of fantastic story about some guy in the airport that did some crazy thing that I’ve never seed before. And that that story will turn into “Dia, tell the story about the guy in the airport…” making me and my stories famous in my small circle of friends and working like a salve on my bruised travel bones.

I sat inside Brit’s and ordered one shepherd’s pie and two Boddingtons nearly back to back. I never write when I drink but tonight was an exception. The indistinguishable emotion stayed with me through my meal and as people filtered into the pub for the drinking hours, I began to realize that the emotion I had was loneliness. A feeling I haven’t had much.

The truth is, no matter where I go I’m always alone. I’m one person, self contained and separate from anyone else. I battle that feeling with club memberships, regular coffee stops and travel routines that make me feel part of something. I have life-talk with lots of the people who take my classes, I visit certain web sites frequently, I talk on the phone more than my wireless plan allows and I have parties at my house as often as I can tolerate. I exercise and call myself lots of titles that make me part of a virtual club. I’m a travel enthusiast, I’m a fun magnet, I’m family oriented, I’m a Hilton loyalist, I’m a hiker, I’m a Manhattan drinker, yeah, I’m a meat eater, non-smoker, German-car driver, beer drinker, big thinker, thin-book reader, wanna-be writer. All of these are tags that make me part of something that can’t be taken away no matter how far from home I am. But tonight they couldn’t save me. So I sat at Brit’s, as the anonymous girl at table 36, who wore a green shirt and army pants. I drank my Boddingtons, cried a little, and was reminded that it’s lonely on the road.