Burning (Wo)man: A Beginning

There are people who learn themselves by staying put.

I have never quite been one of them.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve carried a restless little weather system inside me — equal parts wind, spark, and ache. I was drawn to the horizon before I knew what a horizon even was. I just knew from an early age that I can love a place deeply and still feel the impulse to leave.

This time, though, leaving feels different.

I'm not leaving because I'm bored. I'm not chasing novelty for novelty’s sake. I'm moving away temporarily because I need space that is truly mine — space to hear myself think, to wake without bracing, to stop absorbing the moods, memories, and expectations of the place I have been trying to survive in.

Last year asked more of me than I knew how to give. And, if I'm honest, it was simply the point in time where I could no longer avoid the mirror I often held up for others. It came after years of making other people’s needs my first consideration, telling myself that this was simply what love was, even as I quietly wondered when the life I was helping hold together would make room for me, too.

I have spent a long time disguising the discomfort. Calling tension anything other than what it was. Trying to be reasonable, pleasant, and adaptable, even when something in me kept whispering that I was shrinking to fit a life that no longer fit me.

So I am going.

Not forever. Not dramatically. Not in a blaze of severed ties and burned bridges.

Just. Far.

Far enough to create space between myself and the life I've been living. Far enough to notice what I miss, what I don't, and what my body does when it no longer has to stay on alert. Far enough to remember that I am allowed to want more than endurance.

There’s a Dierks Bentley song, “Burning Man,” that I love because it makes room for this kind of contradiction that I live with — the pull between wildness and tenderness, between needing freedom and wanting to belong somewhere. I feel that tension acutely and I can only say I've gotten better at managing it. The part of me that wants the open road or skies. The part that craves a soft, safe place to land. The part that knows healing may require movement before it can become stillness.

Travel has always been therapeutic for me, though I don't mean that in a glossy, bumper-sticker kind of way. I mean that the whole process — planning, packing, takeoff, arrival — helps me work through what staying in place can keep on repeat. A new place gives my ghosts fewer opportunities to ambush me. A temporary address gives my nervous system a chance to rest. Different streets, different light, different routines — all of it interrupts the loop long enough for me to ask better questions.

Who am I when I'm not managing the atmosphere around me? What do I want when no one nearby is expecting me to want something else? What becomes possible when distance is not avoidance, but medicine?

That is where this project begins: with a suitcase or two, a bruised heart, and the uneasy relief of choosing myself before I have a perfect explanation for anyone else.

Home has not always been a fixed point for me. Sometimes it's a place. Sometimes it's a vehicle. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's the version of myself I can only know after I have left everything familiar behind.

This is not an escape from real life.

It's an attempt to return to it.

And maybe, finally, to return to myself.