“An aching desire to travel to some far off place...”
Um, yes.
Yes, I have this feeling a lot.
This is not to be confused with wanderlust which is a more basic desire to travel.
I am getting itchy feet. I know, I know, I just got back from a trip. But I have this need to go again.
Don’t get me wrong, I love home. I love it. So much. It is my sanctuary, my respite and my foundation. But there is such a part of me that needs to cast herself about, to throw myself out there into parts unknown and unknowing.
I am booking a ski trip back east for Christmas this year. I was taken by Vermont and Maine so I feel like I need to go back and spend a little time there in the Winter. I am not going to move there...but there was something about it that made me feel like there was something there for me...
It is a weird time in life...my children are basically on their own. My son having moved to Seattle and is working out his life. My daughter, busy handling her last year of school and preparing for whatever comes next for her. My parents are good and don’t really need that much from me, now.
I know all of this is going to change. All of it, in the blink of an eye could be different. So I guess that is some of my travel lusting fodder...is that I CAN do it now. I haven’t really been able to for the past decade due to work and kid responsibilities. And now the door is opening wider and I feel myself pulled out there into the world, parts unknown and unexplored.
I will tell you also that this traveling is the only way I know to introduce myself to parts of myself I do not know currently. Something happens to me when I am out there on my own, wandering around, aimlessly landing here or there. I am shown parts of me that I couldn’t access at home. And in this ever evolving self discovery, I am aching to know more.
I feel like I just hit my stride. Just now, this past year. The last six months have been amazing for me. Life changing and revealing and freeing and just fucking awesome. I feel like I have been given a new lease on life. And the freedom from has resulted in the freedom to. It feels as if a long standing blockage to happiness, purpose, love and living was removed. I can’t really explain it other than to say that I feel free. Untethered, unshackled, removed from my former limitations. It honestly feels like I leveled up. And as I stand here on the new horizon of myself, I want to know more!
I have no idea what it all means, but I am excited to find out. And I am sure it will not all be grand and fun and supportive. I am sure there are some nasty lessons just lurking out there waiting to be revealed. However, that is fine. I am ok with that. I think I have finally accepted that life is always going to be a mixed bag, filled with highs and lows and things you like and things you don’t. It is all happening as it should be and there are times where I am going to love it and there are times where I will not.
For now, I am interested in travel. I want to go! I don’t even really care where...I will go to where I have been a lot or where I have not. The destination is less important than the journey getting there. The new and foreign somehow the key to unlocking parts of me buried beneath the familiar and mundane. I am consumed with fernweh right now and wanderlust and just a desire to go!
I have checked myself and for once in my life, there is nothing I am running from...except maybe adulthood. I don’t want to adult really anymore. I just really do not. So I guess I have to own that I do not want to adult and perhaps I am running from that, but myself, nope, I take me with me everywhere I go and that is a good thing. The voices in my head, the committee is not really in session and all is quiet on the Western Front of my mind.
I feel peaceful, content, well. It is amazing really. I feel like every day I have to keep pinching myself, hard, to make sure I am awake and this is my life. It is. Thank fucking God!
Anyway, I am longing to go to far away lands. New Zealand is calling...for sure. Maybe next year. Who knows? I just know that this ache is the kind of ache that is not so much painful as it is attention getting. I feel it deeply so I need address it.
For now, it will be Big Sur this weekend (I think) and then Vermont/Maine next month. I can’t wait. I mean, I really can’t. But I will because the day to day provides the ability to go to those far away places. And I am invested in that process.
Again...still.
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