“Will all of this fit… in here?”
This was a caption of a snapchat video I sent out last week, filming the shirts, shoes, sleeping bag, etc, that I was attempting to fit into my 48 liter backpack. 12 hours later, I was on a plane to Logan International Airport, and in the process of beginning my study abroad (the abroad part won’t happen for five weeks).
I love leaving home.
I love leaving home because I love where I am from. I have an embodied love for Seattle; it is like oxygen, or glucose, because it provides my cells with life and the ability to carry on. Have you ever read "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman? There are creatures called daemons, and they are an animal manifestation of their human’s soul.
Human and daemon can be separated, although its painful. (This is based off my 7th grade memory – if you’re an avid fan, please forgive any mistakes.) Nevertheless, they’re always drawn back together. I can not remember if it is true, but I image they have a sort of internal compass that guides them together, with the assuredness that no matter how long they are apart, eventually they’ll be drawn back together. I would call Seattle my daemon. And every time I come back, I love it more.
If that seems dramatic, I assure you – it is.
Nevertheless, in a certain sense, I thrive in the uprootedness of abandoning routine and familiarity for ambiguity and uncertainty. In the micro-reinventions of myself I undergo in these instances of context displacement, I discover new wells of myself I want to plumb, and old streams I want to dam up. Sometimes, these changes stay when I re-contexualize myself, and sometimes they peter off and are forgotten.
I have arrived here as an unknown sum of all my experiences. Say, for example, that sum was 42. I could be 3 x 2 x 7, or 0 x 4 + 6 + 30 + 2 x 3, but since all that math happened before arriving, all people know is 42. In a certain sense, I thrive in this freedom.
Yet.
It was tumultuous, this leaving, because more than I love leaving home and more than I love where I’m from, I love the people who know me. I may thrive this freedom, but I also fade. I feel less solid, less complete. I find home in people more than in place, so sometimes I think I leave to find more homes. Even though that does not make leaving my homes easier.
This is the phenomenon of meeting new people: I have no existence preceding 5 days ago.
This too is the phenomenon of meeting new people: they have no existence preceding 5 days ago.
Isn’t it fascinating how easy it is for me to understand that no one knows my formula, and to know there is so much that went into creating 42, yet also how easy it is for me to assume I know the formulas of all the people around me? I share myself, knowing I am still unknown, that the pieces are just pieces. Yet I receive people’s pieces, and see them as complete pictures.
I have met 14 new sums, 14 new sums I know nothing about. I am excited. I am afraid.
Before my year off between high school and college, someone asked me if I was traveling with friends. I said yes, but I have not met them yet.
In other words, I am meeting new people, and I am starting a journey home.
