No Caravan, Just an Empty Kitchen

I’ve always been restless, though I’ve not always understood what kind.

Sometimes it looked like anxiety. Sometimes it looked like curiosity. Sometimes it looked like impatience, indecision, or a practical need to get out of the house and move my body before the chatter in my brain became too loud to live with.

Lately, it looks like walking. A lot of walking.

I walk around my neighborhood with no real destination, no errand important enough to justify the activity, no grand purpose beyond the simple fact that I cannot sit with myself. I’m pretty sure this is my body trying to save itself, since my brain clearly wants to self-sabotage.

I enjoy my simple street address. I enjoy the weather, shamelessly and without apology. I enjoy the anonymity, too. The particular mercy of being somewhere no one already knows the shape of my story.

Still, I know myself well enough to be suspicious of my own certainty. When I decide I want something, that’s usually the end of the discussion. I can be single-minded in a way that has served me and, occasionally, startled me. Once my heart points itself in a direction, my mind starts buying the furniture before the lease is signed.

That kind of certainty is a comfort when it happens. It’s also, if I’m honest, a warning.

Because the question follows me, even here, even under better skies: How long will this feeling last?

I think of Miranda Lambert’s “Settling Down,” a song that understands the ache of wanting both the road and the porch light. It doesn’t treat restlessness and rootedness as opposites so much as lifelong companions, two voices taking turns at the wheel. That tension feels familiar to me. I want the freedom of movement, but I also want a place to return to. I want to belong somewhere, to someone, without feeling constrained.

For a long time, my hometown back East made that feel impossible.

My restlessness there had an unhealthy edge to it. I wasn’t roaming because I felt free. I was roaming because I was afraid. Familiar spaces had become complicated. A grocery store, a coffee shop, a street I had driven a hundred times could suddenly become a stage for an encounter I didn’t want to have.

I might run into my ex. I might run into his family. I might run into someone from school who remembered an older version of me and wanted to reminisce, then ask why I wasn’t married with kids.

And if I’m being honest, that fear existed even before the breakup. I had finally gotten the opportunity to move out, and I chose to move closer to my then-partner, only to be forced right back to where I came from. Not just emotionally. Literally. Exactly. There I was again, in the same place I had tried so hard to leave.

That is one of the strange cruelties of a small town: People can know you and still not see you clearly.

I had always felt too big for a small town, but too afraid of a big city. So I lived in the middle of that contradiction, wanting more space while fearing the inevitable failure. I wanted to disappear, but I also wanted to be found. I wanted a new life, but I did not yet trust myself to build one.

My relationship made me feel trapped, but so did the expectations around it. Behave this way. Be seen this way. Stay manageable. Don't take up too much room. Don't become someone inconvenient. Watch our kids, take care of them, but don't have an opinion on raising a child.

My body knew before I did.

It paced in the mornings around the kitchen, tears hot and bitter as the coffee. It wandered into the yard barefoot or out into the rain, trying to remember what it was like to feel. It braced when headlights shone from the driveway. It wanted out, even though it wanted things to work.

California hasn’t cured my restlessness. I’m not sure geography can do that, at least not entirely. A new state can’t do the deep work of healing, no matter how generous the light or how gentle the breeze. You still bring yourself with you — every previous version. You bring your patterns, your questions, your triggers, and your foolish hopes.

But here, the restlessness feels different.

Here, I walk because I can. I roam the streets without needing a reason. I can enter a coffee shop without calculating the odds of being recognized. I can stand in line without constantly watching the exit from the corner of my eye. I can be a stranger, which is not the same thing as being lost.

There’s freedom in being unknown, but there's loneliness in it, too.

That’s the part I’m trying not to romanticize. Anonymity has given me room to breathe, but breathing room is not the same as belonging. I’m freer here, and I feel anchored here. And still, there are moments when the quiet gets large.

No one knows me here. Not really. And for now, that feels like oxygen after being submerged for far too long.

Maybe settling down is not the opposite of restlessness. Maybe it is learning which kind of restlessness is asking to be honored and which kind is asking to be healed.

The restless part of me that lived in Virginia was afraid. She was scanning the room. She was trying to stay ahead of shame, memory, and other people’s expectations. She stopped looking for adventure, for joy, for...anything.

The restless part of me here is different. She’s remembering what it’s like to be curious. She’s impatient, yes, but not panicked. She wants to know the neighborhood by walking it until it becomes less map than memory. She wants to learn the names of streets, the best time of day for light, the places where people gather, and the places where she can be alone without feeling lost.

She’s not running in quite the same way. Not in the way she did as a teen or in her 20s. It’s less running away from the problem as avoidance, and more running away from the problem as a boundary.

At least, that's how I hope it comes across.

That hope matters. So does the doubt. I don’t want to mistake a beautiful backdrop for a complete transformation. I don’t want to ask California to become a cure for what still needs tenderness in me. But I also don’t want to dismiss the real relief of landing somewhere that lets me exhale.

There are places that shrink us, and there are places that give us back to ourselves.

I think California may be giving me back to myself.

Not all at once. Not without loneliness. Not without the familiar hum beneath my ribs that tells me I'm still, in some ways, waiting for my life to catch up with my decision.

But I’m here. Or almost here. Or becoming here.

Maybe that's what settling down looks like for me: not stillness, exactly, but no longer needing to flee. Having someone who respects my need to roam and welcomes me back when I return.

Because I'll probably always be restless. In one way or another.