If I Could, I Would (Thoughts From A Frustrated Traveler)

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I am find myself wanting to leave for Peru now. Perhaps I want to escape the frustration of life, of relationships (or lack there of) and disappointments that seem to occur in every day life. If I could leave today I would. If I could pack up everything in my 12x12 dry cabin, throw half of it away, give away a quarter, then keep the rest wishing I had the guts to throw that away too, I would. If I could buy my plane ticket for today instead of for five weeks from now when Fairbanks is cold and starting to grate on me even more than it already is, I would. If I could leave without putting myself through the pain of feeling like I don’t belong, that people are not what I thought they were, of wishing I had a greater ability to move on from the past, I would.

If I could, I would.

Melissa told me before I left Juneau that I was maybe wasn’t meant to be in Fairbanks. But if not in Fairbanks, where else? I call no place home, and feel inclined to wander the earth like a prodigal daughter. I never seem to fit anywhere, like a puzzle piece that made its way into the wrong box. I am not yellow, or red, or a perfect corner or side, I don’t add to any picture of flowers or horses or life.

I am happiest wandering. But is traveling satisfying when it is an escape? Running from the past, present, and future, is a futile endeavor. Wherever I go, the past follows. My pains and joys, my sins and dark thoughts, memories of love and wanting to be loved, of what I am and what I wish I was, of what could have been and will never be.

Ramblings. I ramble to myself in the quiet of my cabin, when I am driving, and in the moments I am alone on a street. My ramblings are silent, a private movie of shots projected against the inside of my white skull. My eyes are my film, my heart the center of emotion that places the actors in their scenes and gives them the lines I want them to say.

My actors and actresses never say their lines correctly. They never put emotion in the scenes I had planned. They don’t show up on time, or they don’t show up at all. I am usually left with a perfect script and an empty stage. I wait all day in my chair, the cloth chaffing my back, until the sky outside reminds me it is time to go home. One by one I turn out the lights on that empty stage, the one I cut, and painted, and designed myself, before returning home to watch reruns of the stories of others.

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