Wanderlust [won-der-luhst], n. a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about.

 

I’ve never lived anywhere I thought I would never leave; but I’ve never lived anywhere I haven’t truly loved. I’ve been reconciling my appetite to wander with my contented nature for as long as I can remember. I spent the first half of my life thinking those two, innate characteristics were in conflict with one another; I see now they are a product of each other. Change and the inevitability of it heightens the senses. I think we all have moments of clarity when we are faced with impermanence, it’s in our nature.

The day before I moved across the country to attend college thousands of miles from my home of eighteen years I poured my undiluted love of home into a poem then buried it in my mother’s vegetable garden. I like to think that her tomatoes have tasted like that poem ever since — I don’t know, maybe they already did. Flash back ten years and you’ll find an eight year old at the top of a sycamore tree filled with the ache of the goodbye that hadn’t even happened yet. I climbed that tree everyday to watch over that idyll little kingdom of mine. If ever there was a girl who loved her home more than me I have yet to meet her, but still, I spent my childhood being battered by heavy waves of grief because I knew I would eventually leave.

I understand now that, my ability to love a place as deeply as I do is directly related to my acute awareness that I will leave it.

For me, the indistinguishable similarities between a sun rising over the horizon or sinking down behind it define my life. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt like my world is lit by a sun that is perpetually on the horizon. I’m still not sure why, but the longer I live, the more places I move, the more people I love it gets harder and harder to tell whether or not that soft amber light is in front of me or behind me. The one thing I know, without a doubt, is that it lights my way and does so, with a vibrancy that demands reverence.

I’ve never lived anywhere I thought I would never leave; but I’ve never lived anywhere I haven’t loved. I’ve been reconciling my appetite to wander with my contented nature for as long as I can remember. I spent the first half of my life thinking those two, innate characteristics were in conflict with one another. I see now they are a product of one another. The reality of change has continually honed my senses. This isn’t a unique phenomenon to me, we all have moments of clarity when we are faced with impermanence. If you’re a parent you have most definitely laid your lips on the top of your baby’s head. You’ve breathed so slowly and deeply that while the smell of their youth filled your lungs, time was longer, sweeter and even beautifully painful; because in that moment that you slowed down time you were also acutely aware that it would pass.