I have learned today that I have wanderlust. For a girl with a love of words, it's funny that I have heard the word 'wanderlust' quite a few times, without any comprehension of its meaning, and never looked it up. Today, though, in the car with my dad--yes, I get rides from my daddy!--we were listening to 60s on 6 on XM radio and this song about traveling to San Francisco and my dad told this story about having wanderlust as a kid, hearing this song, and how he dreamed of getting out of the small town he grew up in. Then it clicked! I am the poster girl of wanderlust. Truly, I have not grown up in small town America, but my life in Philadelphia does not mean I have seen that much.
I grew up in a household with two parents who constantly prodded my sister and I about getting good grades, going to bed on time, playing nice with people but knowing when to say no, etc. I don't mean to devalue what they did for us and the values which they instilled in us are far from wrong by normal societal standards, but I have lived very little, I feel. Most everyone I know has been to a party with drinking and drugs involved. While I don't believe in doing things just because other people are or they expect you to, I believe that you have got to explore the world around you. You've got to throw yourself into situations that differ from the things you are used to.
I want to do more than party though. I want to travel the world. I want to run with the bulls in Spain, to attend the Berlin Love Parade, to climb the Eiffel Tower, to sit quietly in a caravan hoping the lion 20 paces to my right won't attack while on safari in Africa, buy weed in Amsterdam's red light district just because I can, and to walk through a concentration camps, moved to tears for the loss of all the people who'd been through there during the evil times. I want to meet a million different kinds of people. Just as much, too, I wish to meet a bunch of people who think and hope and dream and talk like me. I want to travel the world, drink it all in, and finally figure out where the hell I belong.
A teacher of mine suggested I read Reviving Ophelia, which I have not done yet, but it's all about how girls are raised to follow rules and be "good" and then they loose themselves. They loose themselves, I believe, because they have not had the opportunity to try things for themselves (without the constant fear that they will get in trouble with their parents or the law) and they've not had the chance to react to situations that define the character of others. You cannot become who you are meant to be if you are sheltered all of your life or if you don't make your own decisions, etc. This same teacher said I have the Ophelia complex (named for Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet who is lost in the end for similar reasons), and I really believe I do from what little she told me about it.
There has to be something I can do to keep from losing myself, but sometimes I feel in terrible danger of it. Our society does not value self-expression or self-exploration the way it should. According to the way people around me live and expect their children to live, a good citizen in our society will go to college after completing high school so that he or she can go on to have a well-paying job with security and benefits. Ultimately, it seems to me that this system values only building a good life for one's future children. People live to work. I do not want any of this, but society casts one out if one tries a different path. How does one reject this bullshit when the people he or she loves having always willingly accepted it without question?
My mom would have a bird if I did what I really wanted to. I would love to just not go to college--or at least take classes but not declare a major and with no real intention to finish a degree--and wander the world and write about it. I am supposed to go to college, study abroad in school, get a degree, and get a good job. I hate to disappoint her but I really do not think that's necessarily for me.
What could keep me rooted safely in sanity while allowing me to fly free and explore? I don't know. The answer may be family, but there are so many familial problems (for me as much as anybody) and who is to say that they will keep me grounded when no one in my family understands that I long to break free of convention and to find a way of living that makes me happy. I don't want to be a conformist anymore, but to break out, do I really need companions?
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