Sometimes I look at people who are from one place, their parents are from there, friends and family are there (and are still there), and I wonder what it’s like to have that. I hear my friends say “‘yeah, I’m happy here for now, but I always know that I’ll probably end up closer to home.”
I meet someone along my travels who speaks of just ‘knowing’ or having a feeling about a certain city, and she moves there 10 years later. She tells me that she made the decision after years of moving around and traveling. I start daydreaming about cities, willing myself to have that same ‘knowing.’
Part of me thinks that it doesn’t matter where I live, as long as I am there, wherever there is. I am looking for the ‘there.’ I wonder if it will find me or I will find it. I wonder if there will be signs and it will be easy, or if it’s a logical decision and it will be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, or a mix of all of that. I’m deep in the process of figuring that out.
And in the meantime, I exist in the spaces in between, the moments caught in the gray, jumping in and out of other worlds, and I forget that mine exists. I have a world too. I need to build a life somewhere, I say. You already have a life, my mother says. I do? I do, and I like it! But why does it feel less real, less meaningful, just less. But that’s only when I look outward. When I look inward I see the person that is me living a life that is mine and it is with open arms that this life is welcomed by me and by the ones who care to be a part of it, no matter where I am or how far away I am.
My parents have left our family home, and it leaves a hole or makes a home shaped hole even wider. My friend passed away, and so did the part of me that felt home with her. Those things have changed, and so will I. People are home. At least that’s what it will always be for me. So I will go visit my family wherever they are, stay with my sister wherever she is, and see my friends along the way. I can do that, I can go to them and I am lucky to do so. I have chosen this lifestyle for now so that I CAN do so. I forget that sometimes.
And when I remember, I also remember that I hope that one day a place will matter, and the people from a place will become a part of me and I a part of them, and when that place will come, it will be there for a while and then probably flit away again. Or the place will stay as I flit back and forth, putting the puzzle pieces together as best as I can in that moment and always wondering what shape or picture it will take as I go along.
Priscilla xo
p.s. I’m writing again 😉