The Reluctant Backpacker

Transcendental Homelessness- The urge to be at home everywhere

I never ran away when I was little. I remember thinking about it, I knew it was an option, I knew that other kids did it. I never believed that anything better was waiting out there for me. It were as if I knew that everything that I needed was in my home.

Ever since I left home, I've been running. I think that I'm just trying to get back to that feeling.

Part 1: Running Away

"There's nothing negative about running away to save my life." - Joseph Heller, Catch- 22

"It sounds like you want an extended vacation." My mom said this to me, without even a moments pause, on August 18th, the day that I told her that her 26 year old daughter was going to run away.

It's true. I did. But, I wanted it to last forever. I wanted to travel and to write and to live and to never sit behind a desk again. I wanted a fantasy and I didn't see why I shouldn't have one.

"Of course," I told her. It's all that I've ever wanted. I pretended to be an adult, I've been working for all the things that an adult is supposed to want. Every spare second my mind wanders into a dream of leaving it all behind.

The lump that quickly formed in my mouth as I tried to explain this to her told me that I was right. I had to go.

Two months later, when I laid out my never-finalized plan to both of my parents, my mom started to cry. My dad wouldn't speak and she just cried. I thought she was crazy. There was nothing more logical than leaving; the thought of staying was the crazy thought.

A year earlier I tried to run away. I got a job working as a low-level staffer on a presidential campaign set to begin before caucus season in Iowa. Living in Denver in my parents new home, where I was completely out of place, I packed up and drove 9 hours east. When I did that my dad wrote me a letter that I carried with me for years after. He told me that he never doubted I'd be a wanderer and that maybe I just had to keep moving to find what came so easy to everyone else: comfort. He warned me that I'd not be likely to ever find something that would hold me back and he told me to keep running. With his approval I did.

He was scared, but he needn't be. I didn't last long at that job, or any other. I never stopped wanting to be wherever I wasn't.

This time when I told them I'd be gone without the plan to return, they didn't try to stop me. They sat, one in silence, one in tears. They never told me not to go. They never told me it was brave. They told me they knew I couldn't stay and that I'd always have to leave. They told me they wished I'd find something to end the restlessness. I told them that was exactly what I was doing.