On May 24th, 2005, I left everything for everything. I did not do it responsibly, or with kindness. I left a wake. I told everyone I knew and loved that I would see them in August, and then boarded a big plane to a tiny island. I didn´t know it was a lie at the time, but I think I´d hoped it was. August came and went, humid and on fire. It would be November, and November would be a round trip back to the islands. I had been on the ground in Colorado for just long enough to pack a Goodwill suitcase with all the home I thought I would need, and that was not even enough to fill it.
My sister moved me out of my college house. It was up to my roommates to find a replacement. I would not see my friends and a family until the following August- a full year later than I had promised. Even then, I would never really return.
I traipsed around the Caribbean, carefree and tanned, and my friends graduated. And my friends got married. And my friends had children. And my mother missed me the whole time.
It wasn't romantic, what I did. Nor daring, nor brave, nor particularly interesting at its core. It wasn´t about being a wild girl who needed to chase the wind, and it wasn´t about some Eat Pray Love journey to self discovery. It was selfish, and reckless, and cruel. With no regard for the hearts I left behind, it was abandonment.
I needed to leave. That became obvious the second I realized I could. But the callousness with which I left has plagued me in the decade since, skewing my perception of home, hitting a reset button on many of the people and places that had been sacred.
The first time I ever checked to see if the grass was greener, it was. I´m not sure you can ever recover from that. Instead, you wonder and wander, only recognizing anything that felt like home after you´ve left it, constantly imagining that it might be better somewhere else.
Being on the Narnia side of the wardrobe has served me well for the most part. I stretched my arms to fit the whole wide world inside, and they were almost big enough. I have found wanderlust to be a dressed up way to assume that the best part of that wide world is the part you have not yet seen.
And I´m not sure that´s true.
