I remember when belonging did not matter.

I would run in circles naked in my yard screaming “I’m jungle boy.”

I had a bowl cut from repeatedly snipping my hair when my mom wasn’t looking.

I thought shredded carrots with balsamic vinegar was better than candy.

I wore leotards with stirrups

thickly applied lipstick to my top lip, left the bottom lip bare

and basically thought I was the coolest person in the entire world.

And then one day

just being me wasn’t enough anymore.

I wanted to belong.

Somehow I snagged a seat with the cool kids

but everything that made me different brought me shame.

I was acutely aware that I was the only one without designer jeans

the only one with divorced parents

the one who said bizarre outspoken things

the one that no one ever seemed to understand.

So I tried to be normal.

I tried to belong.

When I started traveling

I was introduced to a world where normal did not exist.

Where belonging meant nothing

because people don’t own places

and places don’t own people.

The more I traveled the more I saw

that everyone is different

that everyone is odd

and that at times everyone feels alone.

I began to wonder

if I am actually as strange as I feel

or if we are all a slough of misfits

expressing a mere reflection of the normalcy around us.

If we have to leave that normalcy behind

and enter a place of complete unknown

before we begin to become on the outside

what we actually feel on the inside.

Now back in Seattle

in the place where I always longed to belong

I feel like I relate to no one and no one relates to me.

In the past I retreated to the comfort of Puerto Viejo

the only place that ever felt like home.

But I no longer feel the invisible string that has connected my heart to Costa Rica since the day I got on that plane.

I finally feel ready to let it go.

I finally feel ready to open myself to something new.

That is more terrifying and more freeing that I can explain.

It leaves me wondering

where do I belong?

A month from my next global adventure

I find myself hoping to find my new Puerto Viejo.

Hoping that I will find a place again where I feel like I belong.

Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.

Maybe that feeling of belonging won’t last forever.

Maybe I am meant to wander.

And as different as it makes me

maybe that is ok.