My two personalities
Wanderlust is a concept that always felt embedded in my soul growing up. I couldn’t pinpoint where it came from, or when it started, or why. There is no family member I can drag forward to defend my case either. I don’t have a single aunt or uncle or cousin that I can point to and yell, “aha! See? We’re both like this. It runs in the family.” It’s just me.
Even amongst my immediate family, I sometimes wonder if I was dropped off at the front door in a basket and taken in out of the kindness of my parent’s hearts. I feel this way for multiple reasons. First things first, my sister is a carbon copy of my mother. From their beautiful brown eyes to their dark hair, small frames, and perfectly bronzed complexion, they look like clones… tiny little Italian clones. My sister looks older than her age because of her natural beauty and my mother looks significantly younger than her age because of hers.
Then there’s me. I am not a tiny little Italian clone. My eyes are a mixture of green and blue; I have pale Irish skin that wants to burn even under repeated coatings of SPF 50+, and hair that falls somewhere between light brown and dirty blonde. I look like an outsider. More to the point, though, I often feel like one: I had to peer pressure and practically drag my mother into traveling with me, and my sister is not at a point in her life where it interests her. My behavior, then, in comparison to theirs, is completely random. I’m an anomaly. I don’t know where I came from. I don’t know where my quirks came from. But I figure I may as well lean into them, and wanderlust has always been the frontrunner.
Wanderlust, for me, was born during math and science classes that dragged, during late nights when my teenage angst peaked and I thought no one could be going through it more than I was. Wanderlust was a part of my personality. I was the quiet girl who was always reading or drawing or using her school iPad to look up travel destinations on Pinterest instead of doing classwork. I kind of assumed I’d be that girl forever and forgot that I have the power to grow and change if I like.
They say your DNA resets approximately every seven years. A whole new you, like a snake shedding its skin. One day you’re fourteen and thinking you’ll be that way forever, the next you’re twenty-one and looking back on your past like it’s an outdated piece of artwork whose meaning is somewhat lost on you now. This concept appealed to me in high school, to an extent… but I wanted to grow into my skin, not out of it. I wanted to reemerge in a few years and have something to show for myself. I wanted to embrace the charm and sociability and carefree joy that I could have sworn were all in there somewhere, hiding under a small coating of dust and looking rather colorless due to lack of use. I had specific ideas about who I was and who I would be. Somehow, though, wanderlust was never thrown into the equation of before and after. I assumed it was here to stay, that I would long to travel my whole life. Then I actually started traveling… and the funniest thing happened. Wanderlust got shoved to the side in order to make room for a new sensation: homesickness. In all of the time I spent yearning to see the world, I never once spared any thoughts for home. Never looked around me and took the time to appreciate what was in front of me. Never assumed I would miss it if I was gone. And all it took was one trip to shift my entire perspective.
They also say the grass is always greener, and I’ll be honest, it used to piss me off. Sometimes the grass is actually greener because other lawns have the money to make it greener and maintain its greenness, you know? But they’re right. We are constantly comparing ourselves to who we aren’t, constantly nitpicking and listing off the things about us we wish were different. Unbeknownst to us, even if we adopted those different qualities that we so admire, we’d probably still be dissatisfied.
I spent my whole life yearning to see any part of the world beyond my hometown, and once I left, I missed my hometown. It painted everything in a different light. I missed the comforts of home, the familiarity of each street corner: like the love of my life Noah Kahan said, “I know every route in this county… Maybe that ain’t such a bad thing, I’ll tell you where not to speed.” I missed having that intimate knowledge of a place. I missed my home. I pictured my bed, all made up, untouched, wondering where I went. I imagined my protein powder sitting in the pantry, my favorite hair products sitting in the cabinet, my books collecting a layer of dust, my plants yearning for water (this one was unnecessary–my mom always waters my plants for me because she’s perfect in every way, not just in her looks. And she really is perfect in her looks; I was being dead serious about the Italian clone thing earlier).
My point is, I never knew I would have it in me to be homesick. I also never knew I had it in me to see this much of the world, let alone by myself at times, so I guess I continue to surprise myself. I was right though, in a sense: the wanderlust from my childhood is here to stay. It’s settled permanently in my heart. It’s an old friend that I can’t imagine life without. But it sits next to someone new, someone I am grateful to have alongside me, too.