Learning How to Exist

I skipped like a stone across water. One country to the next, to the next. I had spun myself in so many directions that no one in the world knew where I was anymore. I had lost myself in the human tide. I found solace in anonymity. Even now I’m not sure whether I was desperately running to escape something, or if I was chasing some hazy shadow of a dream. Either way, I was both chasing and escaping myself. And no matter how fast I ran, I could never quite get away from myself. I was always just a day away from where I wanted so desperately to be.

But I was also free.

The first thing you learn when you travel is that you do not exist.

I do not remember where I first saw this quote. I do remember being frustrated by it. Try as I might, I couldn’t quite grasp what it meant, but I also could not let it go. I kept it in a drawer in the back of my mind.

I was god-knows where, alone, tired and hungry—though it would be a lie to say that was unusual. I spent the better part of the year alone, tired and hungry. For the umpteenth time, I thought about what I was doing to myself and why. I couldn’t tell whether it was masochism or exaltation. I was ripping myself apart, over and over again, but learning how to reassemble the pieces, not only finding where they interlock with one another, but with different parts of the world as well. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, I dusted off the quote I had read so long ago.

“The first thing you learn when you travel is that you do not exist”

And I didn’t exist. For all of my life, my existence was tied to my past. I asked myself what made me who I am. I am the wind on the prairie, the coyotes howling at the moon. I am songs around the campfire. I am my favourite books. My family. My friends. They defined me. They know me. They knew who I always was, and to them, it is who I always would be.

But in the middle of nowhere, alone, in whatever boarder town I was in, I did not exist. There was nothing making me who I was except for myself. In the world, I do not exist. However, not existing is the only way to know who you really are…who you want to be. It is the only way to be.