There’s a saying I’ve heard several times over the last few years but that I’ve never related to more than in my current phase of life. The phrase goes something like “once you’ve traveled so much you’ll never really feel at home in any one place again.” I’ve always been drawn to the idea because you can apply several different connotations to it. It can be negative, in an “oh no I’ll never be happy settling down” kind of way. It can be adventurous, in an “ooh that just means I have to keep traveling and having adventures” kind of way. Or it can be something in between, which is where I find myself most of the time lately – more of an “I don’t feel at home in any of the places I’m supposed to, but in the way that feels like everywhere I’ve ever been is a little bit of home” kind of feeling. More expansive than restrictive and sad.

Teenaged me couldn’t wait to get out of my small town and see the world. Most days on the drive to school I’d consider not turning left at the four way stop and just driving to Montana to see what happened. (The concept of ‘big sky country’ has always appealed to me.) I didn’t feel that way because I hated my hometown. It was a quaint, peaceful little place to grow up and I had a fun childhood. I just always knew I needed more than that small, southern town could offer me. If I could travel back in time and tell the girl sitting at the four way stop staring down her blinker that in a few years we’d have crossed off 49 states and 7 countries she’d have a much easier time convincing herself to turn left and go to class. But I don’t think I’d tell her the rest.

I’d let her learn, the same way I did, that this much travel comes with a price. Most well traveled people leave that part out when they talk about their adventures. For good reason, too. Personally, the highs outweigh the lows by so much that it doesn’t occur to me to mention the post-trip blues or the fact that I’ll spend the rest of my life longing to revisit places I spent less than a day in or that sometimes I’ll have dreams about places I’ve visited that are so vivid it’ll throw me off balance for a week. It will forever fascinate me, though, that I can simultaneously be overwhelmed by homesickness for a place I spent three nights in over three years ago and also for a place I lived in for four years and also for a place I’ve never even been.

I do often wonder how you’re supposed to establish a life after all of this. Do you just travel until you die? That seems to be an option, especially with van life and nomadic lifestyles being more prominent in recent years than ever before. Imagine spending your life as a nomad only to have to stop when you’re older and your body starts wearing out. As though that phase of life isn’t already disruptive enough, throw in a shift from nomadic freedom to bedridden and see what happens. I suppose we’re all expected to settle down eventually, but that particular prospect feels especially daunting to me.

Another price you pay when you move around a lot is becoming very familiar with the tenuousness of human connection. You’ll look up one day and realize you have connections literally all over the world but you haven’t seen most of them in years. It lends itself to an odd sort of loneliness, one that seems to sometimes go hand-in-hand with the odd sort of homesickness. Like the homesickness, it’s sad because of the lost opportunity, but it’s also really cool because you’ve connected with so many people who are so different from you. Or maybe a lot of people who are from very different places who are all similar. That’s pretty cool, too.

I’ve been writing a book about the abstract (to me) concept of home for several years now. It’s done what all books do when they’re being written – started as one thing then gradually morphed into another, and another, and another. Maybe one day I’ll finish it and actually publish it. Maybe not. Maybe it’ll just keep evolving, never settling into one thing. Maybe I won’t either.