The Engine Idling
Every time you make a home somewhere, comfort arrives with a returning restlessness. Your system shuts off its fight-or-flight hum, but an engine that sits too long carries its own anxiety.
It begins with the goodbyes that feel both useless and desperate. They come wrapped in promises — “surely we’ll see each other again, the world isn’t really that big” — and shadowed by the quieter truth that life moves forward easily, with or without us.
The Rearview Mirror
In taxis to the airport, I scan the route for my familiar places, and force myself to think about them one last time.
The driveway that sits empty now but once held a bike I leaned against while drunkenly kissing someone I shouldn’t have. I laugh softly because it’s the kind of mistake that will never need repairing — everyone who might have been hurt has already gone, and now I’m going too.
The corner where my favorite stray kitten, Lucifer, lives. I wonder if someone else will slip him steak from their burrito and let him curl into their lap, even though he’s filthy and flea-ridden.
The café where I did my best quiet work and a waitress knew my name.
The beach where I arrogantly tried to surf alone — I’d never surfed a beach break before — and was flipped on my head three times in front of hundreds of people, cracking my rental board in the process.
The bar with black handprints still smudged on the wall from face paint a boy sweated off because we were having too much fun to care. It was my birthday.
There is a silent grief in losing the short life you built there — and a dread of having to build another.
Will I belong in the next place, or will I drift back into moving alone? Or maybe I just can’t stand the thought that I — and everyone I knew there — will never be cast in the same light again, even if I return.
The Weight of What I Carry
Sometimes I think about the morning one of the hostel staff asked me how much I made teaching.
I told him, almost apologetically, around 200,000 rupiah — about twelve dollars — an hour. A wage I had already decided was disappointing compared to what I would have made at home.
He gasped. He told me that was more than he or most of the staff made in an entire day.
I remember laughing awkwardly, trying to downplay it. Suddenly aware of how easily I had called something “bad pay” when it was someone else’s full day of labor.
When the taxi arrived, I left that place restless to move to the next.
He stayed. Because it was work.
The difference between us felt heavier than the backpack on my back.
Somewhere Between Freedom and Avoidance
The taxi can be relief when you’ve been living somewhere that fits like jeans two sizes too small.
Still, there’s the background fear that maybe it wasn’t the place.
Maybe it was you.
Maybe leaving was easier than feeling too much — easier than taking responsibility for ending something properly.
I’ve always thought leaving was kinder than telling the truth. Being left taught me it isn’t. This time, the person I didn’t want to lose left first because they didn’t want me enough to stay. We are both nomads at the end of the day.
Departure Gate
I don’t know whether I’m addicted to reinvention or afraid of endings done honestly. I’ve usually been the one to leave first — escaping the responsibility of choosing someone properly. This time I didn’t get the chance.
In the taxi to the airport, one thought circles: what if I had stayed? Would it have lasted longer than it should have? Or is leaving just the cleanest way I know to return to being alone?
Maybe the taxi feels existential because it forces accountability for a pattern I’ve allowed to repeat.
Maybe it isn’t grief for what I’m leaving behind, but recognition of how I leave.
Travel is freedom.
But it is also the only way I’ve learned to say goodbye.
The taxi keeps moving
I don’t ask it to stop