Nomad's Pub

Nomad--good or bad?

These last months of travelling around have been amazing; the time of a lifetime, really, and something I doubt I will ever regret. I do wish I had actually been able to make it to the Indian Ocean, though. That would really have topped things off.

But in all seriousness, travelling like that is not easy. How do other people do it?

Most of the people with whom I talk, or who find out about my travells somehow, think "how cool is that," or how it must be such a "blessing," or wistfully speak of how they might like to do such travelling, too. To take in all these sights; to come face to face with so many cultures; to trekk around the world at all... It's all so exciting, so daring, so educational, so enriching, so...

There are some, however, who approach it from a different side. Who look at me and shake their heads rather sorrowfully. But what about community, they ask. What about roots?

And still some others take my hand, and say, Now darling, in all of these cultures you've been in, which one is yours?

They know that none of the cultures really are mine. That I belong nowhere and that I never ever fully will no matter how long I stay in one place, no matter how much I work to integrate and assimilate. They note that sometimes, too.

One person commented recently, Why, that must be what you are doing: you do not belong anywhere, so you keep going, but paradoxically, the more you keep going the less you belong anywhere.

I want to run; I want to stay. I want to stay; I want to run.

My world is too big and I don't know how to hang on to all of it; but...I don't know how to let go, either; not even what to let go of. I think if I give up one culture or place or home then I will deny some part of me that has a place there, and I cannot do that. I need to be whole, and you cannot deny or reject part of yourself and still be whole...

I do run from one place to the next, and I think I'm going to keep doing it, too. It seems the only way to escape the awful questions that I don't know what to do with: what to do, and who will I be, when I stop.

I don't know what to do with my life; it'd be so much easier not to do anything.
I don't know who to be; it's so much easier to run around being everything until it kills me... and then I won't have to worry about anything anymore.

I feel trapped right now in a life I didn't start or understand, but then built upon, and now cannot escape or change.

I want to run but I want to stay; I want to stay but I want to run. I don't know how to do either, and I am tired of them both.

My world is tearing me apart.

posted by Lada @ 5:38 AM