The more I’ve traveled, the more I’ve grown, but the more I feel like I’ve also suffered. It feels so strange to leave a place you love; it feels even worse when you don’t know the next time you’ll return. I’ve been trying to figure out how to express how it feels to want to live everywhere at once. It feels like with each new place I visit, I’ve already imagined a whole plan of what my life could look like there. I can picture what restaurants I’d visit, the friends I’d make there, the stores I’d window shop at; it all feels so painfully real, and it breaks my heart a little every time I leave somewhere new. I feel like little pieces of my heart have been scattered in different parts of the world. I wonder how one singular place will ever feel like home when I feel an intense belonging at every place I visit.
I want to wake up in New York every morning, make my little coffee, get ready for the day and take the subway to work. I want to walk along the city streets on my lunch break and just hear the rustling of people and cars. I want to be immersed in something so big I feel small.
I want to wake up on the beach in the Bahamas. Being on island time forever sounds so lovely; I’d march to the beat of my drum. Go and lay out by the water, read a book in a hammock, ride a bike to the store. I’d feel so utterly at peace with that deep connection to nature.
I want to wake up in Paris, the city of love. I want to eat macarons for breakfast every day, get a crepe in the street, and look at all the beautiful art and fashion. Maybe even live out my Emily in Paris dreams?
The possibilities are endless, and my life could look entirely different at any destination I pick. It scares me to think we have to choose a path; what if I choose the wrong life? What if I decide to have a corporate lifestyle in NYC, but I was meant to be an author in the Bahamas? The thought of choosing the wrong path gives me the type of anxiety that makes me stay up all night.
Putting roots down and staying in one place forever sounds like the next step for a lot of people, and there is nothing wrong with that, but staying in one place for the rest of my life makes me feel physically ill, and I have no desire to stay in one place. The fear of choosing the wrong life makes me so anxious; the only way to counteract that feeling is to try and live multiple lives in this life.
I’ll live in Paris one year, the following NYC, maybe San Francisco. I’ll go to London, Milan, Japan, anywhere my heart desires, and I’ll stay there until I feel content to try for my next life. As cheesy as it sounds, life is too short not to go after our desires. I desire to scatter my heart all across the world; maybe the whole world will feel like my true home.