Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay
The first time I traveled by myself I was 17 on a plane headed to Tucson, Arizona. I was moving there, I thought. I had packed up all of my things, sold whatever I could, gave my cat to a friend’s mom, and headed on a one way ticket to my new home farther away than I had ever been in my entire life. It was a chance to start over, to begin again.
My father had died a year earlier and I had been on my own almost entirely since then. I was trying to find answers, trying to figure out where I belonged, if anywhere. With the death of my father came the death of everything else in my life. But I didn’t belong there. Not in Tucson. Not in Arizona. I was a pissed off teenager lost and confused and struggling to understand a very adult world I didn’t feel like I had any right being in yet. So I left. Again. On a different one way ticket. This would happen again and again over the years in different ways.
There’s something to be said about those who leave and those who stay. Those who stay are reliable, predictable, loyal to their routines. They’re bound to their families, their jobs, their friends, a sense of security — all understandable things. And those of us who always leave — we’re what? Selfish. Not dependable. Always in an in-between state of neither being here nor there. And I guess that’s what I liked about leaving — it was an unnerving sort of pain I…
