Wanderlust/Frustration

I’ve got the itch again. I have to get out of here. Every time I leave, I see the things that I miss, and I come home, vowing to remember that all the things I need I already have. Flash forward four to six months and I’m packing my bags in a cold sweat, filling up the tank or standing in line at customs, because as long as I keep moving I’m in the current with time and I can quantify my achievements each day in miles traveled or countries crossed off my bucket list. When people ask “what have you been doing since graduation?” I can tell them I’ve lived in other places, seen things most people dream of seeing, done things most people don’t end up doing, and I feel like I can be proud of that.

But inevitably I get footsore and stumble back into my small town, grateful for the lilac smell in the spring, the days in the river in summer, the crispness of the air in fall, or the snow at Christmas. But being here means standing still. It means looking at what people have accomplished while I’ve been gone, and seeing their hard-won stability next to my head-strong resistance to monotony. My heart is equal parts lust for change and love for consistency.

I forget who said it, Emerson, possibly, or C.S. Lewis; that humans require a consistency in life in order to not be overwhelmed by the universe and go completely insane, but we also abhor boredom, and so we require change to stimulate our minds. Luckily, be it by divine providence or only by chance, we have the seasons. We know more or less what to expect depending on the month, and are comforted by that knowledge, but we also welcome spring each year with as much joy as if we hadn’t seen it before. Perfection.

And these are my seasons; leave, remember, return, ache.

Ache for a plan, a purpose, a reason to do this over that. Ache for the road, until I find these things. I leave with open eyes and hope of finding them, end up miles away wondering if I just forgot to pack them and become convinced they’re sitting on my bed at home, waiting for me. Only to return to find that they’ve left minutes before my reentry. It’s the least Zen thing about me, this always running off to catch something that feels just out of reach.

But what else can I do?

Really, Alison, what else can you do?

I could sit on my hands and ignore my wanderlust. Keep working this job, get another one to pick up the slack time and make some more money. Make enough to move permanently out of my parent’s house and into a place of my own. Hope that time will reveal this purpose I swear I must have. But the meantime is lonely; the way things are now, I spend a lot of time by myself.

I could go to graduate school, but to study what? Things that truly interest me, like classics or composition? Or something that may help me get a less boring job, like journalism or wildlife management? (The fact that those two possibilities seem leagues apart highlights my general indecision.) In the end, though, there’s no guarantee of a job, but there would certainly be more debt. And this would be my way of postponing making a decision. Only a placeholder in time.

Or I could take that road again. Without a plan, without enough money to last me any great length of time. I got good at trusting to faith and luck while I was away last time, and even though I missed a few meals I was never without a bed and some interesting new people.

All I know is that time is moving, and I’m standing in the middle of the stream feeling it wash past me, taking seconds of my life away with every ripple and splash of the current. Either I will be washed away somewhere with it, or I will charge upstream until I exhaust myself. But I can’t stand anymore.