October

There are days that I am so completely content with the life I have created for myself, carved for myself. Days when I wake up and know exactly where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing for the rest of the week and it puts a smile on my face. There are days like today, when I get so excited to water my garden and pick the fresh basil that I have grown myself and do nothing more than that. These are the days when the complacency and the normalcy of a routine are so, so wonderful.

But, honestly and truly, most days are not like this.

I’m a wanderer. Through and through.

I’ve tried to run from it. Tried to set roots, tried to tie myself to a place for longer than a year and I get so….terribly annoyed.

I find myself feverishly searching for plane tickets to anywhere, anytime. Preferably now.
I crave finding a different pillow beneath my head each night, surrounded by the arms of a lover in the form of a city I haven’t gotten to know yet. I crave new experiences that fill my soul to the brim and make my heart want to explode. I crave questionable foods and shitty hostel lighting.

But what I find that I miss the most about being in constant motion is the solace I find along the way. The pure and unadulterated peace I achieve when I’m walking in a city, music drifting between my ears, with no end goal in sight.

My first day in Japan I happened upon a temple that made me cry and I sat underneath a tree on a side street that had an exquisite view of the temple. I sat under that tree for 4 hours, doing nothing but breathing.

Each breath that I took in was like a new lease on life, a new perspective, a new love. Each breath I let out was something that had plagued me, taken control of me, that had a hold on me. It was gone. Four hours of breathing in silence, staring at a structure made by hands that have long since departed this earth. And I was lucky enough to bear witness to the fruits of their labor.

My journal entry is so indictive of the introspective nature I was in for that day, and frankly for that entire trip.  

“November 23^rd, 2016.
The Concept of Home

Home, to me, has always kickstarted feelings of warmth and love and joy and that simmering fire in your belly that just made you feel whole. As I get older, what defines home for me is everchanging. It starts to become people and memories and whole places not just houses or cabins. Like this summer, home was with Angela when we were just chatting about our days. Home was Ceramics class when I couldn’t contain my laughter and the music in the background was drowned by joy. Home right now is nowhere. Home is the thought of my parents’ house on Christmas but that’s not necessarily where I belong right now.

I wonder if a singular person, one day, will start to feel like home or if I, myself, will start to feel like home. When I become wholly okay with who I am, have I become “home”? Home is everchanging, and honestly, so am I.”