I woke too early the other morning and walked to Starbucks in downtown Atlanta, the only place open at 6am. I ordered my coffee, stared off into oblivion and made major life decisions while the caffeine began trickling into my system: that maybe I should move to Atlanta, that coffee is the best even though I’ll hate myself in an hour, and to shave my head because I’m losing my hair rapidly. I returned, wrote for an hour, and then was off to my haircut, where I hoped, desperately, that the barber would just go ahead and confirm or deny my suspicions.

I didn’t in fact shave my head. The barber, Mike, told me I have a wonderful head of hair and to ignore the bird’s nest in the back. (He didn’t say that last part. I’m just going to assume he was being polite.) So then I’ve got wonderfully thin hair. And since I can’t see the back, I can just concentrate my anxiety fully on the front now. No matter how much I look in the mirror, my hair, unfortunately, is not interested in growing back or thicker. I’ve lost many things in the past few months while traveling including two sweaters, a pair of underwear, socks, ruined a sweater with an accidental bleach spill, and now quite a bit of hair. It was pointed out to me one evening at the monastery a couple weeks ago. The woman was getting quite the kick out of my hair, losing her shit really, and informed me that it was time for a haircut. I became immediately aware that I’ve been clinging to scraps—every man’s nightmare.

On top of it all, my shoes for the past few weeks have been on the decline and were in such a state of disrepair that it was becoming absurd to even call them shoes. They were only four months old (the same shoes I bought in New Orleans on a drunken afternoon at Banana Republic) and were apparently uninterested in my wayfaring lifestyle. On my last day in Asheville last week, I left the shoes on a bench. Technically, I littered and left them for someone to enjoy, although, I had had someone in mind in particular. The evening before, I had been talking, well, really listening only and trying to get away from, a homeless man I somewhat befriended while sitting outside of my shitty hotel. He recited some verses from the Bible while he sipped on some blue alcohol from a pint-sized bottle. He wore an old pair of tennis shoes with more holes than mine. I figured, should he stumble across my shoes, he might swap them out.

The next afternoon, I was walking in my shitty shoes and saw a hip pair of sneakers, way too hip for me in fact, in the window of a boutique men’s store. I entered, now its only patron, and the one employee, rather than greeting me, looked past and through me towards the back of the store where the dressing rooms and bathroom were. To be frank, I had drank a beer with lunch—well, two in fact—at some dank, hippy-ish brewery in the beer district of Asheville. So, per usual, the extrovert and somewhat obnoxious side of me was coming out. I shopped around for a few minutes (I believe by this time we had at least exchanged niceties, smiled even) when I announced that I couldn’t effectively shop without relieving myself. “I’ve got to pee really bad,” is what I said in fact. She was already staring towards the bathroom and pointed, enviously perhaps, to its door. When I returned, I was ready for shopping and told the girl that my shoes had had it with me. She agreed, nodded gravely, and we searched for a size 11 together. She picked out a pair, I tried them on, they fit, I took them, and really, that was that.

However, since I was in a talkative mood and, as always, starved for attention and interaction (I should really see a therapist), I asked what happens if she needs a bathroom break. That solemn and pale look of hers returned and she eyed the other end of the store. “I don’t get to go until my break when the manager of our sister store upstairs returns. Otherwise, there’s no one to watch the store.” That seemed relatively inhumane to me I thought and I told her so. “I can watch the store for you if you want,” I offered. I thought that was a nice gesture and since I’ve been ruminating far too often about my unusually selfish existence, I felt a hair better about myself, with the exception of my thinning hair. She politely declined, thanked me, and told me that I was “sweet.” So I was off with my new shoes, feeling overwhelmingly altruistic, and dropped my old shoes on the aforementioned bench should my friend from the evening before find them. I walked a few miles in my news shoes and returned to my hotel that evening with horrifying blisters.

The next morning, I had a terrible flight into Atlanta. We flew through a thick set of clouds when we were closing in on the city. An older woman from New York was holding me by the arm as she told me countless stories about her brother and how he sold his brownstone in Manhattan, “one of the oldest brownstones,” she said, and moved to Atlanta. “He just fell in love with it.”

The turbulence got us talking. She saw me press against the seat tray as though that might steady us and even prevent a nose dive into Decatur. I swore in that moment that I would never fly again, that we don’t belong in these things thirty-five thousand feet in the air. When we landed, she told me I had a good heart and that I was “sweet,” although, I don’t quite remember saying very much at all. I was merely listening as always and determining how I might return to Florida if I was truly done with flying. We said our goodbyes two or three times in that awkward way when you realize you’re still headed in the same direction, the only possibility in an airport. I eventually fibbed, told her I had to go to the bathroom, and effectively lost her for good. I decided, in the bathroom mirror, that I am neither sweet nor capable of getting away with the haircut I’ve had for nearly two decades.