Why our visit to Formentera changed everything (if only for a while)
I am so bored.
I am SO BORED.
Does that mean I am boring? my mind sometimes asks me.
The answer my Ego gives me varies, depending on the confidence of the day (as you may know, I'm a woman, and things like confidence is totally based on time of month and the different amounts of hormones floating around in the sea of our being)
You see, I have this problem. Some would call it restlessness. Some would call it boredom/easily bored. Some would call it "a need to discover or explore". I like to call it "gypsy-soul" as it resonates some kind of specialness about me. We all like to feel special, right. Well, having this gypsy-soul-syndrome makes me want to move. Constantly move. I don't like to be in the same place. Not at all. Places bore me, and places fascinate me. Each new place refreshes me, enlivens me, wakes me up, makes me feel young. And each place that I stay in for various lengths of time, depending ont he place, bore the hell out of me.
I love the movie "Chocolat" with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Juliette plays a wandering woman, who together with her daughter, moves from place to place. She knows that it is time to go, when "the northern wind blows". I like this so much, because it really resonates with me and my feeling.
I come to a place. I love it, I feel alive, I'm excited. And then, weeks or months later, routine sets in. I know what's coming next, I know the coffee in that shop, I know the person working in the bakery. I get bored. My soul is longing for movement. And that's when the northern wind is blowing through me. It's a feeling I can't explain. It's too deep for me to put into words. It's existential.
When I was younger, in my 20's, and I had just started travelling, I thought, along with everyone else, that it was a passing thing. That it was a young person's discovery channel.
But now I know that it's part of me- it's who I am.
I've now lived on this island for 4 years, and that's a very long time for me to live in one place. The only other place I lived in for that long, is London. For me, both London and Ibiza are places that are very very special, that speak to my soul, that ask me to stay and complete important periods of life. In London I studied, I finished a degree, which was a big step for me- to finish something. And in Ibiza, I became a mother, I created a family, a home, and a business. These are things that I don't think could have happened unless I had actually put down some roots. You can't really grow and blossom unless you have firm and wide roots that you nourish.
It also takes very special places for me to even be able to consider staying for that long and put down some roots for a while.
It was always complicated for me to explain this need for movement to the people around me.
The most complicated part was to be accepted, as I always felt I was being judged for it. That people thought I need to calm down, get a life, get a real life. You know. "Real" in their terms.
As real as everyone else's lives are, as real is mine to me.
I'm tired of pretending I'm going to stop moving one day- because I know now that I won't. This is me, this is who I am. I am a traveler, a gypsy at heart. I feel good from this movement. It makes me feel alive, just like for other people there are other things that make them feel alive.
So I arranged a two-day trip for the family to Formentera, our little sister island.
We all were together, everybody happy. So refreshing.
And this visit, this short 2 day visit, away from our home, with new colors, new fragrances, different streets and new vistas, really made me realise how good it does me. It doesn't have to be a huge around the world trip. But it needs to happen. I need to move. I need new things to enter my eyes, my brain, my mind, my soul, my heart. And I feel alive again, and so happy to come back home.
Well, it's already been a while since we came back, and I'm already feeling it. The need to go somewhere. Sometimes just being near the airport makes me feel refreshed, excited, happy. The sound of the airplanes and the sight of people running to catch the line in the check in desk, makes me feel like ME.
I think next trip will be soon.