Gone

I feel uneasy. It happens quite a lot. It’s difficult to talk about without sounding sad. I’m not sad. More anxious. Unsatisfied but not ungrateful. Like having a craving that you can’t satisfy or an itch that you can’t quite reach. Deep down inside I wonder if I’ve denied my gypsy tendencies. . . chosen a road that I enjoy but a selfless one that any parent might understand.  Laid down roots that bind me. I don’t like to feel bound. It’s claustrophobic. It’s like choosing what routine you want to dance for years and years. Sounds morbid doesn’t it? I don’t mean it to (look, see – I’m apologizing). It’s just me. I feel like “just a wife and mom” and not so much like myself. Many times I enjoy the cadence of my family's life but one can still want more while enjoying something.

I’ve been distracted. Pre-occupied looking around my life instead of actually living it. As if I’ve been fixated on the view from my window instead of the one I’ve always hoped to see. Meanwhile feeling like an outsider. While standing around talking mommy talk or observing myself in a conversation with a neighbor. I’m a fraud. I think –Who the hell cares about what swimming lesson is better than the other or why you won’t go to a certain theater. Don’t they know there’s more to life? Is something wrong with me that I think the people next to me at Costco are superficial? After all,  I’m in line with them! Am I judging them that their loading up on destructive paper towels and pre-packaged baby carrots that in all reality don’t even resemble a carrot? I couldn't keep track of how many, myself included, loaded up on things they didn't know they needed until they came upon the coveted shelves at Target. It's a sickness.

I’m not sure what’s changed but I feel a shift in perspective. I’m almost indifferent about those things and irritated that they’ve been distracting me for so long. I enjoy my safe little life but I fear it’s become a drug. It’s not something that this mother of three brain of mine thought would ever be appropriate to say but I don’t want any roots. At least not deep ones. Is that strange? All I’ve known of home has now become a collection of dear people and irreplaceable memories.

I just want to GO! Go Somewhere. Go anywhere! Into the world that’s been waiting on me and I on it. To get lost. Eat "strange" food, be uncomfortable, make surprising connections, meet God on the altars of inconvenience. Outside of this blinding western perspective. Apart from the debt-driven machine of suburban life. To quit ringing that darn dinner bell in the kitchen but instead to tell my family “I don’t know what’s for dinner, let’s see where the train drops us at next.”

Am I selfish or just honest? I suppose most of all . . . I feel free. Free and now eager. One day I'll tell someone that I can't meet with them because I'll be gone. GONE. I'll be out of the country. They'll ask where I'll be going and I'll reply with some fuzzy idea but all I know is that I'll be gone. Long gone. One day. . .

The world is a book and for those who do not travel read only one page. ~St. Augustine