the sweaty life of a nomad

I’m not sure if it’s just my luck but I always seem to sit in the back of the plane. Usually the very back row, with the bathroom door slamming every other minute and the other, a woosh from the toilet. It’s probably because I’m always buying my tickets less than a week before departure, mostly because I am so chronically spontaneous that sometimes I worry it’s financially toxic, ha if that could be a diagnosis I have it. “Chronic spontaneity”. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I’ve truly gotten homesick. I used to view it as a problem, now it just feels like I am my most authentic me, creating and settling into my space in the blink of an eye.

I recently had to fill out a background check for a new job in which they asked me my previous addresses for the past seven years, giving me ten back spaces to fill. I couldn’t even narrow it down to three years with that room. It shook me a little. Have I honestly lived in that many places? And has there truly been that much time in between where I am just a complete nomad, living out of my car or my backpack, on trains and in hostels, in my tent on mountaintops and little grassy knolls by gushing rivers. What was this break in between, they would ask? Homelessness, I guess, was as justified of a response as I could muster.

I seem to find home in the arms of the people I love more than the places I lay my head. So naturally, my homesickness manifests itself differently than most in that I miss my people so much more than any place I’ve lived. Whenever I leave for somewhere new, it’s in the memories of the people that leave me with such a profound taste of melancholy. It seems so blatantly obvious to me now, I feel rather silly I never recognized it before. I believed myself to be beyond homesickness, perhaps incapable of it, while my heart aches for my people everyday, it’s grown to be my most reliable confidant, as uncomfortable as it is. I’d wish for nothing different. There is no greater comfort in the discomfort of having loved and lost and missed and known your people, And I am convinced it is the best way to grow and know yourself.