Ever since I went to New York for the Red readings in November I’ve wanted to travel.
Which is mildly odd because I never wanted to travel before. I mean not that I had anything against it, just that I was fine not. And now I think it was probably because I was so happy where I was, whereas I’m not as happy where I am now. And I think of the people I know, the people my age for whom travel is a big aspiration (or a big reality) in their lives and I think they all have one thing in common: none of them want to stay where they are.
One girl, ever since I’ve known her (which is to say since we were five), has wanted to get out of our hometown. She’s always known she wanted something bigger, something not so isolated, not so far from the rest of civilization.
Another (who I actually met in New York) has a similar feeling about the place she lives.
Yet another just wants to get away from drama in her real life.
And me?
Well I never wanted to flee my hometown and even now that I live in a place I’m not so fond of I don’t hate it. I want to get out, yes, but not right now; right now I just want to enjoy the summer and get through school and figure out where it is that I want to wind up permanently. When it comes to me and travel, I think I’m a little like Rory Gilmore though it took me a while to figure it out. I adore my hometown and have never thought I was “too good” for it, but every subsequent place I go seems fascinating. Even here. Every place has its own culture, its own identity and pulse, its own LIFE. And every place I go just opens my mind up a little more. It’s like this quote from the Newberry Winner, Criss Cross:
“I think,” he said, “that it’s a good thing to get out of you usual, you know, surroundings. Because you find things out about yourself that you didn’t know, or you forgot. And then you go back to your regular life and you’re changed, you’re a little bit different because you take those new things with you.”
This rings true for me. It seems that wherever I go I find new things about myself.
In New York I found out that I could navigate subways and that they didn’t give me panic attacks (I had thought they would). I found out that, just as I had assumed, I was more interested in people watching at Starbucks than seeing the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, that for the first time ever I began thinking that maybe I - small-town Jordyn - could feel at home in a big city.
In Northern California I found out that yes, crossing the bridges did scare me a little (the possibility of earthquakes, you know), but that I loved the climate. I found that the town my friend lives in, with its village architecture, felt like home. I found that there were two-story Borders and cute little bookshops and that my dad’s prediction of me loving it, was spot-on. I found that being away from my parents for a weekend made them more worried than it made me and that boarding planes and sitting alone and navigating SFO airport didn’t scare me so much as it made me smile and think that maybe I would be better at this growing up thing than I give myself credit for.
Florida, when I visited the summer before sixth grade, and a few times since then, showed me a different side of my mom. It made me realize, probably for the first time, that she had a life before my dad and me and my sister, that she had a whole family, siblings and everything, apart from us. It taught me that I am not partial to the humidity and that thunderstorms every afternoon wouldn’t sit well with me. And, of course, it introduced me to one of my best friends.
Sometimes the best way to find yourself is to get lost, to be somewhere unknown, to let go of your everyday.
You know how I think everyone lives in their own little bubble? Well the thing about travel, and probably why I love it so much and want to do more of it in the future, is that it widens that bubble. It shows us things about ourselves that we never knew, it changes us in little ways, and it makes us appreciate other ways of living. People can do this for us also, but that is a story for another time.