I am heartsick because there are people at home who I feel I need to be with right now. It is so so hard to know that people are going through it and I am not able to be there. I feel so helpless. I know that love transcends large bodies of water and national borders, but is my faith in these relationships and my feelings for these people enough? My absence will be clear in their memories of these hardships. And in mine.
Two days before I left New York for HIA, I met up with my good friend to say goodbye for the summer.
"You don't know how to stay in one place," he told me as he hugged me.
"I guess you're right," I replied, thinking about the constant motion I live in.
I've gotten this before, from multiple people. Jenna tells me I spin too fast in my life. Jason thinks I don't know how to stay in one place. Zina thinks I may never learn how to truly slow myself down and resync to the pace of Town life.
As if this comment wasn't enough to send me spiraling through thoughts of home and love and lack, he followed up immediately with a question I didn't anticipate.
"What are you looking for?"
I stared at him for a while, wondering if he realized that his question was too intense for the sidewalk outside my NYU office job, too involved for the five minute coffee break I had before returning to FileMakerPro.
My response came quickly and naturally, and the conversation hasn't left me since.
"I don't know. I just know that I haven't found it yet."
As I travel from Teaneck to Berlin, from Oakland to Kazakhstan, as I settle in to my new nest in Brooklyn with Ashley and Chris, the world will keep running, I will keep looking, and maybe, maybe one day, I will find it--whatever it is-- and be able to slow down. 'Til then, I am content to continue wanderlusting, traveling, soaking up all the world has to offer me... and, very necessarily, periodically returning to Oakland and to the souls that make it my home.
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2 comments:
Very honest, insightful, and thought-provoking. I like this post a lot. I think sometimes we try to fit people into molds that we assume qualify as "normal." If you're satisfied as a globetrotting wanderluster or sorts, go hard. I respect your pursuit of something (whether you know what it is or not) more than I do people who are afraid to even conceptualize the pursuit. Some people are so afraid of their own shadows, so unwilling to leave their own doorsteps that they merely exist in this life, never really living. Of course some people do become addicted to the pursuit itself, losing sight of an intended goal, but I don't think that will happen to you; your heart is too big and your mind is too open to become satisfied with such things. I'm sure that when you find what you're looking for, you'll know. What's important is that you keep searching in and outside of yourself. So again, I commend you, send you love and blessed thoughts and I look forward to reading more.
Yes. Love this post. Love you!
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