Prodigal

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I’m writing this on a plane. For the last 18 months I’ve spent a lot of time on planes. But this hasn’t been in pursuit of jealousy-inducing travels. I haven’t been travelling the globe to take and make videos to drive those who follow me online to sickness.

I’ve been ferrying back and forth between Ireland and Spain for the bones of two years. Because my work is in Ireland, and because I desperately wanted to be away from there. I felt so alone. So alone that I wanted to run from it. I set up shop in a place where the sun is warmer, where work isn’t the most important thing.

And for a long while this worked. I enjoyed it all so much. Really. But no matter where you are, eventually the problems you ran from catch up. See, you never can truly outrun any of it. You can put distance between you and them for awhile, but eventually they return.

And so now the loneliness is creeping in again. I think, I have always been predisposed to this sense of loneliness. Even as a child. I’d go to bed on Sundays nights fearful of the morning. Feeling outside of everything that came so naturally to everyone else.

I saw someone say online recently that they always wanted to be the brother who moved abroad, but they never anticipated being the brother who was never around. And that resonated. I miss my family, my friends. I miss being there for the quiet moments.

And maybe I’ll move back and in eighteen months I’ll write of loneliness again. The cycle will just continue. But I don’t think so. I think being away has given me a gratitude for home, what it means.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be born in their home. So many people have to search for it, build it up, piece-by-piece. An endeavour that is so hard it hardly seems possible.

I count myself extraordinarily lucky to have been born to my home. To have that knowledge. To know I have a home and to know exactly where it is.

However, sometimes you need to leave things behind in order to understand what they mean.