I’m on my way home from New Mexico, flying over the green space slit apart by roads in boxes and rectangles. I feel sad that I’m going home already. I realize that I could’ve enjoyed my trip much better if I had known a few things that I’m going to talk about now, but I learned them on this trip, so I guess I’ll just have to go on another one and use them there.

I set out for the trip pretty pumped to be in New Mexico doing something more exciting than being at home. I was a little bummed after spending the whole first day traveling there and the whole second day waiting for my cousin at the airport. I wanted to just go go go. I realized I needed to not set my expectations too high. Things would come when they wanted to come. I wanted to do so many fun activities that I didn’t want to relax, and this made it hard to simply enjoy spending time with family. However, what I’ve realized now is that you need a good balance, or you’ll end up leaving and not feeling relaxed. So take time to relax, and realize patience is key.

Why is patience key? Well, if I would’ve been more patient and just let things happen the way they did, I would’ve been relaxed and still had the awesome time I did when we did go adventuring the three days we were able to. One day we went cliff jumping. The water was beautiful for swimming in, and my gutsy cousin jumped a whole three times from the 75 foot drop. It took all my courage to jump once. I felt like it wasn’t going to be that hard to do before I was standing there about to jump. The water dropped below the steep, caramel-colored, rocky overhang and I thought and said, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I could’ve never gone if my cousin wasn’t below, treading water, cheering me on. I jumped, my gooey jello-like existence falling through the air. There was way more time for me to think about it than I thought there would be, so much that I must’ve started to get scared and brought my knees up a little. I landed on my bottom. Down in the water, all the air was knocked out of my lungs with a whack and it took all of my energy to paddle up to the surface. I let out a loud moaning for seconds while I treaded water before I could finally begin to breathe. “Swim on your back! On your back!” My aunt called from above and I swam over to my cousin, holding on to him for a moment before I regained my pattern of breathing.

When we finally got out I began crying because I messed up. They said jump feet first and somehow I landed on my butt and somehow I knocked the wind out of me and my back was aching so bad; it must’ve taken the blow once I entered the water. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, and it wasn’t even fun because it was so terrifying landing and injuring myself.

Later, my cousin realized that I had never had the wind knocked out of me and didn’t know what was going on as I landed. “Well yeah, that would be terrifying!” He remarked. “You did it. You didn’t mess up, you did it.” My aunt assured me. My sore neck, butt and back now remind me of what happened, and they remind me not to take everything so hard. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to end up completely feet first.

Finally, the trip was a blast. Driving back from the adobe to the airport a few hours ago with my cousin, we reminisced about other fun times we’d had together. They were simple things, like when my cousin had coached me in ping pong and taken my brother and I on the longest drive to the furthest Culvers ever for late-night Cheese curds. Then there was a time in Chicago when we’d walked all over the place looking for bikes to rent, then ridden along a Black Lives Matter Riot. We also remembered how we always played Charades back at the apartment and volleyball on the beds. Then there was St. Louis when we’d played Catch Phrase in the basement, and driving in the car memorizing a catchy commercial. In the end, I realized that the place in which the memory was set was almost irrelevant to these memories, and some of the best were the simplest. So worrying about where you are won’t do you any good, because in the end it’s the people that really make the memories. I’m so thankful for all of my memories and my favorite cousin.