Now, all those things you left behind don’t go away
entirely. Some find a way to follow you into the next big city, or down the
highway, or into the next state, or across an ocean. Taxes, usually. They follow
you everywhere. And your anger and your hate and your frustrations. Those are
inside you and so you never really leave them until you deal with them. They're just easier to ignore when you’re in a new postal code. But given the enduring nature of the things that grieve our hearts, the Location Cure
provides you a necessary, invigorating, momentary reprieve.
But what do you do when you’re not in need of a cure?
Because it’s happened, friends. I have arrived at the moment when I am bored at
an airport. The ride to airport was a chance to have a fun conversation with a
roommate that I hardly ever get to have a real chat with, rather than a stomach-turning half hour of enthusiastic nerves. Check-in and security
were old hoops I’ve long since mastered jumping through. I almost checked my
metro map while waiting for the train to my gate because this all felt mind-dullingly
routine. I wandered past the shiny bright airport shops and took in the dozen
languages being spoken around me without so much as a blink, answering a couple of texts from my
friends as if this were any average Sunday, as if I weren’t going to get into a
deformed metal cylinder with wings and engines attached and be hurtled from one
continent to another as the world below me turned into night.
The airport muzak was playing Hall and Oates when I found
my seat in the waiting area. So that was nice.
And it’s not that I’m not excited for where I’m going. My
friends and I planned this trip in January of 2017, when tickets for Hamilton
on the West End went on sale, and I’ve been waiting for it since, fourteen-ish
months of checking countdowns and making plans and updating budgets. I’m ready
to see everyone again. I’m very excited to be in Edinburgh and to see it decked
out in snow. I’m delighted to be going back to London for a bit. I’m ready to spend
a couple of day traipsing around parts of the UK I haven’t been to before. I’m
going to take a thousand pictures and live aggressive amounts of life. (I’m
also going to have multiple study sessions with my friends because we’re all
grad students, but let’s not talk about that.) I should be pumped right now. This
is the beginning of an adventure!
And I am. And it is. And I know what a privilege it is to be able
to be blasé about it, and how weird it is that international flights are a fact
of my life. But for maybe the first time in my life, going somewhere different has
felt like an interruption of the adventure already in progress, rather than the
adventure itself.
My heart is settled where I've been. I’ve got a pile of classes to attend to in pursuit of a
degree I’m incredibly suited for. I’m really happy with where I’m living and my
roommates. I’ve got two good jobs that I enjoy doing and don’t enjoy leaving. I’ve
got an internship that I had to pry myself away from. And I have relationships
that I don’t necessarily want to put on hold for ten days. I’ve been enjoying
being me of late. I kinda don't want to leave.
But I’ll enjoy being me on the other side of the ocean as
well, I’m sure.
I’ve just got to get there first.
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