Nowhere to Go but Anywhere

Written October 2023, Bora Bora, French Polynesia

I guess that’s one thing they don’t tell you about becoming a traveler. They don’t tell you that one day you’ll come back and feel like a stranger in your own home. That the streets you once walked without thinking now feel unfamiliar under your feet, the people you once knew so well seem slightly out of sync, as if you missed a chapter in their lives—or maybe they missed one in yours.

No one warns you that once you start moving, you may never fully stop. That home will no longer be a place, but a flicker of feeling, a moment that catches you off guard—a late-night conversation with a stranger who somehow understands you, the scent of salt and citrus in a city you just arrived in, the weight of your backpack digging into your shoulders, reminding you that you are, in fact, still searching.

Pieces of Home

In a way, I am lucky. I have felt at home in a dozen places, in the presence of people who, for a brief moment, felt like soulmates. I have sat on rooftops in foreign cities, watching the sun dip below a skyline I will never see again, and felt at peace. I have heard my own laughter echoed back to me in voices that don’t speak my native tongue.

But there’s a cost to this kind of life. For every piece of home I’ve found, I have left another behind. And sometimes, I wonder if I will ever feel whole again—if the homes I’ve built in people, in places, in fleeting moments will ever exist in one place at the same time. Or if I will always be chasing something I can never quite hold.

Belonging Everywhere, Yet Nowhere

Traveling has given me the gift of feeling comfortable anywhere, but it has also made me wonder if I truly belong anywhere. I’ve become too foreign for the place I once called home, yet I remain a foreigner no matter where I go. Maybe that’s the price I must pay for choosing an open-ended life, for choosing movement over stability, for choosing to collect memories instead of roots.

And yet, I wouldn’t change it.

Because there is something beautiful—something terrifying, yes, but also beautiful—about knowing that I have nowhere to go but anywhere. That my next chapter is unwritten, waiting for me to stumble into it. That I could wake up tomorrow and book a flight to the other side of the world, just because I can.

Forever Moving, Forever Home

Maybe that next chapter will take me to Nepal, where I’ll climb a mountain and remind myself what it feels like to be small in the best possible way. Maybe I’ll strip down and slip into the cool waters of a hidden lake in Slovenia, feeling the weight of the world dissolve around me. Or maybe I’ll ride a horse across the endless grasslands of Kyrgyzstan, my heart pounding in time with the hooves against the earth.

And if you know me well enough, you know that I probably will.