Find My Pieces

I dream of salty winds, sand snapping at my face. I dream of skin so caked with dirt a 3-minute shower seems luxurious. Jungle buzz, foreign words and unknown smells all litter my dreams. Whistles, clicking of tongues, buses splashing through puddles. In my wildest dreams I travel alone into the new. Each morning I am forced to say goodbye to my wildest dreams. My alarm clock sounds, and on some mornings I clench my eyes tight, hoping to awake somewhere anywhere. Exotic, cold, mountainous; It just doesn’t matter. I awake each morning and drink the same coffee, eat the same eggs and lock the same door before driving the same streets daily. I have always felt most alive in the new. New places, people and sights make me feel more alive than anyone or anything. Unpacking, even my old things has a magic to it in a new place. I am comfortable in the unknown and I have grown to crave places and sights and smells all new. When walking along a new street or a new path I fly. Down allies and through door ways, each giving me the extra magic I need to feel vibrant. I am alive.
I find myself now trapped, held captive in South Carolina. Beaches, mountains at one time they all gave me that magic. Now they have been seen. I find myself today, soaking up the sun on a campus which once gave me that magic which intoxicates me in each new city I find. Denver, Aspen, Frankfort, Washington D.C; each distant relatives I once sought. They once held pieces of me. Sadly, even with their pieces I need more. Just like the others, they became normal. Stagnant.
They are the same. The magic is gone. They are places which I now own. I can recommend restaurants and places to avoid. I know the shortcuts and the places which only the locals know. Yet each becomes part of the normal. Known, understood and comfortable. I crave new places and I always have. I feel most myself when I am seeing something for the first time. Unpacking in a new apartment or hotel is like every Christmas rolled into one. Then I am free. I can roam. I can be free of everyone, yet have everything. My new cities become like a long lost family. Ones I have never seen but heard so much about; distant relatives carrying some piece of me I need to find. As I begin my life as a college graduate, I hope to find all of them. They each have parts that I’ve been chasing through each move, each apartment and at the bottom of countless boxes.
I need to travel.