The Displaced Person

The traveler.
The floater.
The expeditionist.
The trekker.
The wanderer.
The voyager.
The ghost...

All words to descirbe someone who is submerged in the unfamiliar. Whether or not he or she enjoys their experience abroad all depends on their sense of adventure, right? And how much they just don't care about what's going on at home? Their ability to abandon all emotion?

Wrong. Totally, completely, utterly wrong.

If any of you have ever seen the movie Dan In Real Life, you'll recall the scene where Steve Carrell's love interest, played by Juliette Binoche (who's also the love interest of Dane Cook in the movie), tells Dan and his family that she is most comfortable when she is "in an environment completely alien to her own", or something like that.

I found myself taking a particular liking toward this attitude about life. Why stay home when there is so much world to discover? Why wouldn't you just get up and GO, learn as many languages as you can, taste a plethora of different cuisines and affiliate with fresh, interesting people whose existence you would otherwise never have had the pleasure of knowing...?

I am a displaced person, in a land that is so strange to me. Some things I like, some things I could do without. I am a journeyer, who has chosen to follow the same approach to life as Ms. Binoche's character in the aforementioned film.

And I am alone.

Halfway across the world with my heart beating like a raging thunder in my chest, I am sad today. And I will be sad tomorrow, for reasons I would otherwise prefer not to mention.

But I will keep pressing on.

It's the life I chose, after all.