“Homeless” for Half a Day

It’s been a rough* few hours here. Most of my worldly belongings are packed up and in my car. 

*rough: internet surfing at Starbucks with a free drink. Ahem.

I moved out of my apartment today, and there’s a gap between now and moving into the next place I’m going to live. So, I’ve been hanging out at Starbucks (can’t complain) and have had a lot of much needed time to reflect, while not having a place to call home.

It’s been a crazy week. In addition to last minute planning (finalizing itineraries, googling pictures, travel guides etc etc,) I’ve gone straight from finishing classes and finals, to cleaning and moving out of my apartment, and now I’m going to have to turn around and pack for my trip. The 3 month time frame of living out of a suitcase has commenced. 

It kind of excites me to only live out of a suitcase for 3 months, but I also wonder if I’m crazy for doing it. [I should take a picture of my suitcase. It’s pretty small.] There are a lot of items I’m having to give up. On one hand it’s very liberating to not take a lot with me, and on the other hand, it’s really scary.

It’s like when I was decluttering my room. Every time I had to stop and ask myself: “Do I need this? “Do I NEEEEEeeeed this?”(intentional Confessions of a Shopaholic reference there for you awesome people who got that). After I got over the initial pain, it felt really good to throw stuff away. I…”I THREW IT ON THE GROUND IN THE TRASH.” But before that moment, I felt attached–what if I need this? What if life is big and scary without it?

So basically, security blanket syndrome [I’m assuming that’s a thing]. Being “homeless” has exasperated this syndrome. There’s so much uncertainty about my future–will my flights go fine, my connections, figuring out the trains, where I’m going to stay, and all that good stuff–compiled with this weird feeling I have when I realize I don’t have a place to call “home” right now. Besides the obvious convenience and practicality of having one’s own home, I think home is the ultimate security blanket we cling to, figuratively and literally. And mine’s gone right now. [sort of]. 

So life seems really unstable, and there’s a very great fear that I’m actually just crazy for trying to do all this, because what if it doesn’t work out!? [don’t worry, everything’s actually been going fine so far]. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve been “homeless” or moved or gone abroad. [You should ask me about the summer before I came to college, aha]. And I like traveling. I’ve always been a wanderer at heart. So it seems that I shouldn’t have these fears and this anxiety, right? 

Well, as calm and cool as I may appear on the outside, adventure always scares me, and there’s definitely a side of me that wants to be a homebody. There’s so much I want to hang onto to feel safe. There’s so much I don’t want to “throw out.” There’s a very strong desire to just stay put and stay home, to stay with the things and life I know. 

But…I think all people get scared and feel this way, even adventurers. I think that the difference between people who say they like traveling/adventure and those who don’t, isn’t that the one’s who go on to have adventures aren’t afraid. But they take a leap of faith into the unknown in spite of it. And eventually, the unknown becomes less scary, and the pursuit of the unknown becomes the familiar.

So I’ll be living out a suitcase and being sort of homeless. But it’s kind of nice to give up my need for certainty. That’s what adventuring is after all.