"Wherever our parents settle is the place we must set out from." -Irwin Kula Interesting, huh. Something about this quote struck me. Since I was probably sixteen years old I have had the desire to explore other places...to be elsewhere... I wanted to see the world. I wanted to meet people who were different than me. People who didn't look like me...didn't talk like me...People I could learn from. My first real taste of this was Europe at age seventeen. I believe it was then I caught the bug. My heart longed to be back there, and I got my chance again at twenty-one. But this time I stayed for a bit longer...4 months. I was, for once in my life, surrounded by people who looked, acted, thought and spoke differently than me...refreshing and beautiful. I didn't know what else to do with this intoxicating overload of information other than to soak it in...wide eyed and open-minded...When I left, I didn't realize this at first, but part of my heart stayed and took on permanent resident there. And it still is. And someday I will visit again. Sooner than later. I hope. ~~~ I have been afforded the opportunity to travel more than many I know. Most of my adulthood years I have bounced in and out of the nest...restless...and knowing that there has to be something more...driving my family crazy I'm sure. Eventually I flew from the nest for good. I flew West. I flew towards something unknown...scary...And I flew alone. Terrified, awkward (still am), and excited. I came to a place where I am surrounded by people you don't look like me...who don't talk like me...People that I am learning from. And it is beautiful. I know that we're different. But we were one cell in the sea in the beginning. And what we're made of is all the same...We're not that different after all. So I sit here, bleary eyed and tired, looking too much toward the future and realizing my suffocating need to be content...here...where I am...location and self... I cannot make some things anything other than what they are. I cannot be somewhere other than where I am before time lends itself to allow me to go. I'm not here done here yet. And I will take this next year as gift that I get to have one more year in this place. It's not home. And I'm honestly not even sure where that is...home (the one I will eventually make for myself)...But maybe that's the beauty of my ability to adapt. I can't really be there yet. Although my heart will be restless until I am. But I will be content with where I am...In this moment... It is what it is. And I have to be okay with that. | 
