When you leave somewhere, and work hard to settle somewhere else, and then come back to the original somewhere for a visit, it changes something inside you.
You look around in disbelief, because your friends and exes and family members had the audacity to get on with their lives in your absence, to get married, convert to a religion, have children, start a cult, lose weight, start businesses, become alcoholics, grow a beard, grow old, become successful, die. Life moved on, when you were not looking.
And the moment you realise it, you join the tribe. The tribe of wanderers. The restless tribe.
From that day on, you will always be conscious that you are not, in fact, the centre of the world, or even of your own life.
That people out of your sight will do things that you planned to do with them, without you.
That places that your best memories are set in, now only exist in these memories.
That people will forget you, or remember you, at random.
That places will crumble, and streets will be renamed, and unstoppable suburbias will circle your home town until you barely recognise it any more.
That everything is in motion, constantly, unstoppably, and so, you realise, you should be too.
From that moment on, every new place in the world that you visit ,you will ask yourself - could I live here? And if the answer is 'yes' you add it to a map that you have in your head, with all these places tagged, just in case. Everything you own is mentally measured for a suitcase and either on a 'take' or 'leave' list in your head, just in case. Your passport is always renewed. You travel whenever you can. You can't stop moving house even within the country you find yourself in. It's like an itch under your skin, it comes and goes, it burns and fades, and then one day it does not go away.
You do.
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