born to run? 🦋

For the last 6ish years I’ve been moving & living all across the country, sometimes all across the world. To some, I think it’s looked like I’ve been running from things, never quite satisfied or content with the spaces I occupy. For the most part, that has not been my experience. The times that I’ve spent without a home have felt nothing short of magical, as though I was running towards everything that I’d always needed. I’ve felt like my life was the fullest it could be while exploring & learning, so much so that perhaps I started to believe that that was the only way I could be those things.

the mads I am while bouncing in uncertainty & spontaneity was the only one that I really wanted to know, and maybe others did too. And truly I have loved the energy I’ve had to run towards so much wonder & curiosity; the love I’ve developed for the world, the hunger for more culture & change, & immersion in experiences that are uncomfortable and life altering, I’m so proud of her. In the past year or so, I’ve become increasingly exhausted by this part of me. She’s felt more like an incredibly irresponsible and expensive nuisance. I still am crazy in love with her & she inspires me daily, but damn I’m uncovering a version of me that isn’t her. She believes in the power of safety and stability. Of simple days and moments that hold nothing but rest, & oof she makes me uncomfortable. So much of my body exists amongst restless energy that to believe in a space to “settle” feels like I’m giving up on life, on me, on the person I was born to be. It’s confusing to live in this body with a soul that feels so split and conflicted on her needs.

Over the past year, I’ve discovered how the sensation of home and safety can grow and build inside of you that you begin to demand more of the world, of yourself. the discomfort I’d grown so accustomed to, desired even, has been shifted in my heart to something that feels inconveniently unnecessary. & yet this revelation is so heartbreaking for me. I have always seen the want to nestle in, develop routines, be a long lasting part of a community as something so beautifully unattainable for me. I’ve strolled through streets of neighborhoods in 40+ countries with a pack on my back, admiring all that humans create in order to connect. It feels so foreign to be a part of someone’s day to day & up until recently, I thought I wasn’t “made” that way. That for me and my restless heart, I was more geared towards the small worldly connections that pop in & out of your life so so quick, yet etch pieces of your heart together.

I’ve tried to let my body speak to me for what it needs, but darn it all if I don’t like the answer these days. And it reminds me how beautifully complex this life can be, and humans within it. How some are given so much opportunity to discover who they are, who they want to be, and what they want from this life, while others are not privileged with these wonderfully selfish, sometimes trivial, decisions that I’ve been blessed with making. But in all of my traveling, in all of my experiences, my memories, my confusion & loss, I have learned so much more from others than I ever expected to. Uncertainty has led me to some of the warmest comforts and kindest hearts. It has left me achy and grateful, bewildered and heartbroken. I have healed parts of me I didn’t know were broken through the use of my legs and my unsteady voice. So while this feels like a new melody, a stranger, almost toddler-like in her development, I would really love to be able to nourish her in the ways I’ve nourished the wild mads I’m so crazy about it. And maybe someday they’ll be equally as crazy about each other, teaching & learning & compromising alongside one another to synchronize the most harmonious symphony of her soul.