Sometimes late at night, I write because my mind won’t stop spinning. I enjoy being alone late at night, knowing that people are starting to fall asleep, entering dreams. The world gets quiet, peaceful. The accumulation of the days events swirl in my head and I think to myself, did I do better than yesterday? Did I make any kind of impact on this big, beautiful world? Some days I answer that question better than others.

I’ve been both blessed and cursed with a wanderers soul, a gypsy soul. I have trouble staying in one place for too long, always itching to leave, getting anxiety when it’s been too long since my last travels. I don’t enjoy the feeling of being home. My home is on the road, in a plane, on a train. My home is somewhere I’ve never been before. Being on an adventure has always been the greatest kind of home I’ve known.

Perhaps, having been an army brat for the beginning of my childhood, the idea of home was embedded in me wrong. Maybe all my frequent travels across Europe when my dad was stationed in Germany, or all our moves before settling in NC caused me to not fully understand the concept of home. It wasn’t a place, it was a feeling, one that could be acquired anywhere. Maybe the feeling of actually physically moving my body into another area was the definition of home that I learned.

Whatever the case, I hope that I always have the opportunity to feel at home. Although I claim NC as home, I don’t think I’ve ever truly felt at home when I’ve spent long periods of time without traveling here. I’m starting to feel the anxious hand beginning to suffocate me again this week. There’s a shadow looming over me, a rain cloud I can’t escape. There is almost two months between coming home from Europe and my next mini trip. It is too long. I can’t breathe when I think about having a couple more weeks before I can see Raleigh in my rear view mirror again.

I wonder sometimes, if it’s possible to find someone in this life who will make me feel at home. I wonder if there’s someone out there who feels the same way as I do about the concept of home, and that we’d be able to feel at home together flying to our next destination. Does he exist? Will I ever find him? I want to. I don’t want to keep wasting my precious time going on dates with guys who don’t understand that the fundamental problem in my life is that I have a terrible case of wanderlust and the only cure is also going to make it worse. Where is the guy that will surprise me with a weekend getaway to somewhere new? The guy who knows I’d rather have plane tickets than a bouquet of roses? The guy who understands that I can’t waste my precious money on new toys or a fancy car because I’m saving all my extra money on my next big adventure?

Am I searching for something impossible?

I’m not your average mom, either. I want my kid to be happy and healthy, of course, but one of the most important things to me is that my child experiences adventure. I want him to live and breathe travel the way that I have. I want him to be open to people of other cultures. I want him to wake up each day, knowing that in X amount of days, a new adventure awaits him. I want him to know the feeling of feeling so alive that you cry because the world, and all the people in it, are so beautiful. I want him to experience the terror and delight from doing a tarzan swing in the rain forest. I want him to sit at the top of a hill in Assisi and gaze over the Italian countryside in pure awe, speechless. I want him to climb to the top of Arthur’s seat and admire the beautiful city of Edinburgh. I want him to dance at the largest free music festival in Europe in Vienna and feel so alive he can’t stop smiling. I want him to experience all the beauty I’ve seen, but also to experience his own.

I have such high hopes for both of our futures. I just wish there was a way to make them happen. Jude deserves a stepdad. He deserves someone to love him as much as I do. He deserves that kind of selflessness in his life. He deserves to have a WHOLE family to go on adventures with. I just hope I can find a guy who thinks of him as a wonderful asset to his life, and not just all these guys who run scared. Jude is everything to me. And the guy I fall in love with will have to understand that I’m a package deal. But the best kind of package there is.

xoxo

Katie