Addicted to Escape
What were those people moving across the sky flying towards? Or running from?
When my parents moved to Canada from Burundi to start their new, married life together, they had no idea what the future would bring. Like many immigrants, travel was often the only option to access opportunities and attain success.
It was in Canada that my sister and I were born. Our birthplace stood in direct opposition with our ethnicity. Before we could speak, the question of “where’s home” sprung up everywhere…laid in a web of complexity in the pages of our passports, bringing color to the dull rooms of immigration offices and curious shifts in the reactions of border officials. Travel for us meant diaspora. It meant our parents’ lessons from home would be passed down to us unanchored to a connection with land.
For a long time, planes and windows brought me comfort. As a family, we would move many times throughout my childhood because of my dad’s career in aerospace. In those accumulated miles, I felt kinship in the shared experience of going somewhere with hundreds of passengers. There was gratitude in the anonymity of being one of many just staring out the window wondering what awaited us past the airport.
I was obsessed with the calm I felt above the clouds, looking out at a wing my dad had had a hand in designing. It was there where vulnerability felt temporarily possible because we can all cry at 36,000 feet so long as we wipe our tears before landing. Windows were a lookout point when I needed to escape the borders of my mind. Once we landed, in the darkness of my room, when I could no longer stand being alone with my thoughts, I could look up and wonder if a twinkle was a star or plane. What were those people flying towards? Or running away from?
With five moves before the start of high school, I’d learn to adapt my personality to various environments. The goal was always simply to fit in before I had to leave again. I didn’t understand the sadness I felt at friendships lost with each move or the hope I built up before landing somewhere new. All I knew was that most people claimed a hometown, and to me that felt like a fascinating achievement in the act of staying still.
I know now that moving isn’t the scary part. The fear lies in the stillness required to discover and stay true to who you are no matter the environment. Our fears and anxieties don’t disappear when we’re off chasing the new. They may disappear for a moment but they await our arrival at baggage claim. Waiting to be unpacked.
I am now reckoning with the need to be still with myself for the first time. That with all of the lessons I’ve picked up in my diverse experiences, it’s time I make some mistakes. I am no longer the child that didn’t have the space to try out new things. That now is as good a time as any to become my own elder.
At the age of 26, I moved to New York. It is the twelfth city I’ve lived in and the first place that I’ve chosen to be my home. I knew this city was somewhere I wanted to stay for a while — a place I could build community and trust in myself. A place where there was no excuse for boredom but where I would learn to love myself even in my solitude. It would be the home base I could come back to after travel. The place where a new friend asked me if I move for places or people, and I stumbled at the realization that I’d spent years running. Running from depth, running from the eventual moment my facade of having things together would shatter, running from conflict and love, or the thought that I could and should be loved as I am and as the woman I aim to become. It’s time to find home within me.
Karen Maniraho was a 2014–2015 Global Health Corps fellow in Burundi.
Global Health Corps (GHC) is a leadership development organization building the next generation of health equity leaders around the world. All GHC fellows, partners, and supporters are united in a common belief: health is a human right. There is a role for everyone in the movement for health equity. To learn more, visit our website and connect with us on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook.
