PERMISSION TO CHASE THE SUNSET

Captured by Mitchell Royel in Moorpark, California, where the hills held the last light like a secret and everything felt soft, cinematic, and almost gone. Inspired by the aesthetic of Sarah Feldhut and Brian Whalen — faded Americana, west-coast dusk, quiet glamour in the rearview, and the kind of romance that lingers long after the moment ends. Now playing: SUPERIMPOSE by ELIO.

I was young enough to think boredom meant something was wrong with the room, not with me.

Around my eighteenth birthday, I remember sitting in class, staring at the clock like it had personally offended me. The teacher was talking, everyone was taking notes, and I was somewhere else entirely. My body was in the chair, but my mind was already out the door, down the street, in some life that felt bigger than fluorescent lights and assigned reading.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I was restless in my own skin.

I wanted something to happen. Not something small. Something that would shake me awake. I wanted wisdom, but I didn’t want it in the form of homework. I wanted freedom, but I didn’t know what I planned to do with it once I got it. I wanted to be seen as grown, even though part of me was still waiting for someone to tell me what came next.

And somewhere in that restless little season, I started to wonder if maybe the guys outside of school had more to teach me than the people inside it.

That sounds reckless now, but at the time it felt almost spiritual. Like maybe answers lived somewhere beyond the rules I had known. Maybe someone older, or different, or not tied to the same world I was in every day, could show me something I couldn’t see yet.

So when I met him, I was open in a way that was both beautiful and a little dangerous.

He seemed calm. That was the first thing I noticed. Not perfect, not magical, just steady. He asked questions like he actually cared about the answers. He listened without rushing to fill the silence. At eighteen, that felt like a rare kind of attention.

One day, we were talking about life, choices, and all the things I thought I was ready for. I was probably trying to sound more certain than I felt. He looked at me and said something about blind spots.

“Do you know what yours are?” he asked.

I laughed a little, because I didn’t know how else to respond.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He didn’t make me feel foolish for saying it. He just nodded.

“What do you think you keep choosing without realizing it?”

I looked away.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think you’re looking for?”

That one stayed in the air longer.

I wanted to say love. I wanted to say freedom. I wanted to say proof that I mattered. But none of those words felt safe enough to hand over yet.

So I said it again.

“I don’t know.”

And maybe that was the most honest I had been in a while.

There was something tender about admitting that. I had spent so much energy trying to seem like I knew who I was, where I was going, what I wanted, what I could handle. But the truth was, I was guessing. I was reaching. I was young and curious and reckless in the way people are when they are desperate to meet themselves.

He didn’t shame me for not knowing. He didn’t demand that I perform confidence I didn’t have. In that moment, I felt the relief of not needing to pretend to be something I wasn’t.

No need to act wiser than I was.

No need to act healed.

No need to act grown just because I had turned eighteen.

There was grace in the pause. There was grace in the answer, “I don’t know.” Sometimes not knowing is the doorway. Sometimes it is the first honest prayer we speak without realizing we are praying.

Of course, long story short, it didn’t last.

Not in some dramatic, movie-ending way. There was no great betrayal, no grand heartbreak, no scene that changed the shape of my life overnight. Things stayed cordial. Respectful enough. A little underwhelming, if I’m being honest.

But I don’t look back at it with regret.

I look back and see a younger version of me trying to find a mirror. Trying to understand what she couldn’t name yet. Trying to learn where her blind spots were and what her longing was really asking for.

Maybe I looked for answers in a person who was never meant to become the answer. But even that taught me something.

There is nothing wrong with seeking answers from someone we trust. There is nothing wrong with asking questions, being unsure, or letting someone kind sit with us in the mystery for a while.

The lesson was never that I should have known better.

The lesson was that I was allowed not to know.

-Ryder