A whole childhood in one house, one town, one group of friends. So many dreams, yet so many out of reach. The moment I moved out of my parents house I couldn’t stop. First I moved around London, different apartments, different neighbourhoods. Then different cities, countries, cultures, landscapes. Slowly the things I owned shrunk down from filling one whole room, to one car, to two bags. My dad still thinks it’s a phase, that inevitably I will want to settle down at some point and make a home for myself. Some people think I’m constantly running away from something – the real world, commitment, etc. I have considered these theories, over time. But the truth is – I have to keep changing things up to keep me feeling alive.
There are definitely benefits of living in one place, some of which I miss desperately. A stable job, a community of close friends, a place you can make homely, a routine, being there as your friends grow and change over time. But alongside this comes being comfortable, and complacent, and blind to somewhere. You stop seeing it with the fresh eyes that you once did. It stops being exciting. You stop appreciating it’s quirks, all that it offers – all the opportunities and possibilities. You stop talking to the strangers on the street, stop making new friends, stop going out exploring, or going out alone to see what the evening brings.
I am particularly guilty of this. I find myself well and truly stuck in rut, relatively quickly, tucked up in a cosy blanket of easy-routine and under challenged. I know immediately when it happens because it comes with an unavoidable side effect – vivid dreams of other places, wanderlust to my depths of my gut, craving adventure and the open road with it’s endless possibilities. I used to dismiss these feelings as “grass-is-always-greener” syndrome, but then I realised it was giving me an important message. I am not a girl that is meant to be still. My heart is always on the move, and my body has to move with it.
So I adopted life on the road. I tend to stay between 3 and 6 months in one place. Whilst doing this, I started to notice how alert I became. All the bitterness I carried was replaced with gratitude. I was overwhelmingly grateful for the ocean, along with the sweltering hot days. Grateful for the bitter cold London evenings. Grateful for the mountains, lakes, rivers, lush greenery. Grateful for city culture, and then grateful for illogical Dominican idiosyncrasies. When you are on the move, everything is transient, you only have it for so long and then it is gone. There is never enough time to get used to it. I am wide-eyed and in awe, all of the time.
Not only this, but the act of moving forces me to grow in ways I didn’t even know were possible. Leaving everything behind – loved ones, loved possessions, loved places. I strip myself of it all and reconnect with all that we really truly have in this life – ourselves. A reminder that we cannot really own any material thing, nothing comes with us in the end. Also a reminder that we are not owed anything by the people around us, we have to find everything we need within ourselves.
I have lived in absolute tropical paradise and observed myself become blind to the beauty as the months pass. Yet with time away, I return and it is as beautiful in my eyes then as it was on my very first visit. Every leaf, every grain of sand, is demanding to be noticed and admired once again. And those friendships, the ones we live for, they are as strong as ever when we are reunited. Those friendships transcend space and time. Leaving always shows me where the real friendship lies.
So I will continue on my journey. A journey of heartbreaks, courage, wide eyes and everyday a new friendly face. People will always ask me when am I coming home. To which I will tell them – I am home. The road is my home. To some nomads, nowhere is home. But for us, everywhere is home.
