It seems just yesterday when I took my first real trip without my parents. It was a school trip to New York City and in an uncharacteristically bold move a friend and I set out from our hotel one evening without our chaperone’s knowledge to explore the big bad city on our own for a little over an hour. I was 17 then and I guess that first act of independent travel set the ball rolling for my future love of travel.

This past week has been a feeling of almost suspended animation. I’m on the verge of beginning a new chapter in my life and yet the pull back to what I know is strangely strong. Time and time again in my life it seems my past catches up to the heels of my future and it makes me question myself. If there is such a thing as destiny it is something I have always struggled with, but I do believe there are clues along the way to help guide us in the direction we’re supposed to go. I’m constantly keeping an eye out for pieces to the puzzle of the path I’m following but at times I also often feel a nagging pull to jump to a path just parallel of the one I’m on.

There is one part of me that wants to be this vagabond wanderer with nothing tying me too tightly to one place. I enjoy my friends and family, but this desire to travel keeps me from staying rooted for too long and so it prevents me from forming deeper relationships with people I care about. There are very few people that have come into my life who truly understand me and so it makes me a little sad to see those friends growing in a different direction from me. I see friends who are in loving relationships and others getting married and it makes me sad to think that I’m missing out on that aspect their lives as well as my own.

I’ll be honest. It concerns me that at this crucial point in my life I’m still not quite sure if I’ve made the right decisions. (Is there ever just ONE right decision?) This cruise job practically fell in my lap and it felt like things were going exactly as they should be, but wouldn’t you know it – my past caught up to me in a most unexpected way and I can’t help but feel a pull to stop and think about the choices I’m making. Is travel my form of escapism? Am I running away from something? Is a backpack my personal band-aid for my uncertain heart? Will I EVER settle down and allow myself to open up and be attached to one man? Or have I really thrown those kind of chances away for good?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m taking this cruise job. I’m extremely excited and it feels like the right thing to do for me right now. I can’t wait to start. But in that same respect I also have this nagging questioning in my mind that keeps me awake late into the night sometimes. I wonder if some other version of myself had made some different choices would I be the one living and loving the domesticated lifestyle?

Will I ever be able to combine both desires or will it always be one choice over the other? Why is it that when I’m in a relationship I have the urge to put a guard up and run away and yet when I’m out on my own I feel the pull to be a little more grounded? Questions I hope to have a lifetime to figure out. And maybe there isn’t one right answer but many possibilities if I just open my heart enough to follow through without so much uncertainty.