Not Everyone Will Understand Your Journey (And That’s Ok)

It was a mild Boston winter in February. I lay on the floor of my Airbnb room, the patter of snowfall gently tapping on the window. An empty suitcase lay next to me on my right, a pizza box with a half eaten slice of pizza on my left, my belongings on the bed. I was attempting to discern the lines and shades of brown on the wooden ceiling above. I closed my eyes and wondered how many people had slept in this room. Where they came from, where they were going. Different people coming in and out, but the room remained stagnant, unchanging, the same wooden ceiling, the same white walls, the same brown carpet. I was the stranger in it, the temporary element.
I have always loved to read but only truly ventured into the writing world at the age of 9, when we started moving around . I never really saw the need for a diary. I would pick up any blank A4 paper I could find, fish around in my father’s briefcase for pens, much to his annoyance, and I would write.
Half empty houses and hotel rooms are nowhere to bring up a child but I reveled in them.
Within the bland rooms my imagination ran wild with no obstacles in its way, and with each move I wrote more and more, some pages getting lost along the way, but I like to think I left a little part of myself behind in each place.
Not everyone will understand your journey.
5 years. 5 countries. 3 continents. Swapping cities, starting from zero countless times, buying one-way tickets, random hello’s, tearful goodbyes. Maybe I am a little deranged, sub-consciously searching for something, a missing piece, some of the pieces I left behind?
It doesn’t take long until my feet start to itch.
Where are you from? Where are you now? Where is your home?
Where is my home?
Well, I have always felt at home near bodies of water. Rivers. Lakes. The ocean. There is something about the immense calm spreading for miles as the eye can see, whilst simultaneously bursting with hidden life and diversity underneath. It captivates me, like a secret. Perhaps it reminds me of myself. There is always something going on in my head, thoughts keeping me awake at night. I always get to point B before A, my hands and mouth working twice as hard just to catch up with my brain, the puzzled look on people’s faces is always telling.
I’ve never been linear.
Maybe that is why I love the ocean, the calm, silent, un-judging ocean, borderless and welcoming, it reflects you in its waters and says, “I see you as you are, nothing more, nothing less.” How I envy the creatures that get to call it home. In another life I would come back as one of them. Moving with the current, the salt water filling my lungs, it would be my air. I would only come up to the surface when I miss the sun. I would lie in the sand with my eyes closed, taking in the rays.
I felt something cold on my cheek. Back in my room my face was wet. I opened my eyes, sat up and wiped my face with the palm of my hand, took another bite out of the pizza slice and began to pack. A new destination, a new home.
Not everyone will understand your journey, and that’s ok.
