For as long as I can remember I've been leaving home. When I was a little girl I would lay in the grass and look at the clouds trying to find a way to get one of them to take me away. They never seemed to listen. I made big plans with incredible detail about how I would leave. In college I planned to apply to Oxford for my masters degree. I constructed the greatest ex-pat life for myself. But life didn't seem to listen. I never even applied.
I remember having a United Nations ambassador come to my school as a girl, he spoke seven langauges fluently and I was in awe. I dreamed of growing up to join the UN or work in foreign service. And every country I've ever traveled to I searched out the ambassador's house I dreamt of the life I could have there.
I would spend my summer days going on bike rides as a girl to farthest boudaries of the surrounding neigborhoods making up stories about the houses, traveling to distant lands with each street I passed.
For as long as I can remember I have been leaving. Never putting down solid roots, always waiting for my great adventure. I suppose life is full of compromises. And I've made many.
I officially made it 108 miles from my childhood house. Not quite my ideal itinerary. Sometimes I start to itch as if I've become allergic to this place I cannot call home. I wonder how long it will take before the city swallows me whole. Or before I break the walls down and never look back. I wonder which part of myself I will give into.
I wonder at the madness of it all. Of a little girl who has spent her life with eyes addicted to the horizon.
I remember having a United Nations ambassador come to my school as a girl, he spoke seven langauges fluently and I was in awe. I dreamed of growing up to join the UN or work in foreign service. And every country I've ever traveled to I searched out the ambassador's house I dreamt of the life I could have there.
I would spend my summer days going on bike rides as a girl to farthest boudaries of the surrounding neigborhoods making up stories about the houses, traveling to distant lands with each street I passed.
For as long as I can remember I have been leaving. Never putting down solid roots, always waiting for my great adventure. I suppose life is full of compromises. And I've made many.
I officially made it 108 miles from my childhood house. Not quite my ideal itinerary. Sometimes I start to itch as if I've become allergic to this place I cannot call home. I wonder how long it will take before the city swallows me whole. Or before I break the walls down and never look back. I wonder which part of myself I will give into.
I wonder at the madness of it all. Of a little girl who has spent her life with eyes addicted to the horizon.
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