Wanderlust
You’re leaving again. Tonight. Or you guess tomorrow. Early.
At dinner you acted calm, but maybe too normal, too casual for how awkward you usually are. But that’s okay. It really doesn’t matter. Everyone in your family tiptoes around you at dinner anyways, dinner is known to be a battle ground. You hope that they will think back to this visit as a good one. It’s weird to think of going home as a visit, but that’s by definition what it is. And visits end and this is ending and you’re leaving again. You always left, and so far, you’ve always gone back. And the anger by now has faded in the face of frequency, but the discomfort has remained.
There’s nothing for you anymore here. Besides your family, but they’re not living here for you. They’re just stuck. And you hated being stuck so you left. But you had nowhere else to go so now you wander. And you wear the mark of Cain like your favorite sweater, and you find joy in the lack of destination. And you find joy in the unfamiliar territory you explore like a modern-day voyager. And you find joy in so many other places: the people you meet, the van you live in, the greasy food you no longer treat yourself to but you now survive on. This is the life you were born to live even if it was a last-minute decision you made in the midst of failing out of college, depressed with no one to turn to.
You move forward, even though it hurts your mother more than you could ever imagine. You can’t even begin to think about how choosing yourself over your professional career affected your father. They think your home on wheels makes you homeless, but they don’t understand that living in their home made you feel homeless.
So now you leave again. And you know that they were waiting, expecting you to go. And the fifth time will hurt less than the first. And every time after this will hurt less and less. Until it hurts no one and you can stop feeling sorry.
