To spend the rest of your life with what could’ve been seems like the very worst thing one could do to their soul.

I arrived in Jackson several weeks ago with the preconceived notion floating in the back of my mind that I don’t think I want to do this anymore—travel nursing, I mean. At least, not by myself. Then I started talking to two older ladies sharing tea out of teapot at a cafe outside in the gloomy, cloudy, chilly mountain air of northern Wyoming. And it dawned on me that this is honestly where I thrive. Right here, in the unknown, the uncomfortable, with nothing but strangers around. It brings parts of me to life that were just moseying along in the cozy comfort of knowing most everyone around me. And to think I almost gave up that interaction for fear of seeing a face I really didn’t want to see. To think, I never would have met Barbara from New Hampshire and her friend Betty from New Jersey, and that almost broke my heart clean in two.

The last time I moved someplace new by myself was to Arizona in 2020 when covid was at its height. I forgot the feeling. I forgot how much I love it, how much I crave it. This afternoon, I noticed myself growing overwhelmed by exhaustion and ideas and excitement but also displacement, everything all at once— I had to breathe and remind myself that everything will come, now groceries. But that’s what I realized I had been missing in my life: this ability to be brave, to somehow prove it to myself as the healthiest, most honest version of me.

It has been so confusing for my friends and family to understand how moving gives me wings. How it helps me feel free, when they believe it to be so stressful, it is what gives me life. To go someplace where no one knows you until they do. Until you open that door and present yourself as the most authentic version of you, without any previous identities or opinions. You are as vulnerable as you want and need to be for each new connection. And while I was processing all this while walking through a town I have seen so little of in my many years, and now call home, I realized that this is what makes me good at my job: my ability to connect. But maybe it doesn’t simply make me a good nurse, maybe just good at being human. And that’s truly all I want. So if moving creates the most authentic, healthy, and real version of me, while it also produces feelings of loneliness and continued hunts for home, wouldn’t I at least try to reproduce that sensation in some way?