My True Love

I am currently reading "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert (and I saw the movie last weekend when I was only 1/2 way through the book) and I saw a quote in the first couple chapters that just hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like she was talking about me - exactly how I feel about my love for travel and seeing new things!

Here it is:

"Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to - I just don't care." ~Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert) - Page 41

Maybe it's because I don't have a family of my own that I am drawn to travel and adventures as much as I am......but I really do think that it has always been a part of me, especially since I studied/traveled abroad in Spain and Europe. That was such an exciting, exhilarating experience - something that no one can take away from me - even if I lost everything else in my life. Those memories are forever mine and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.

I just honestly don't "get" the people who are content to just do laundry, cleaning and a trip to Applebee's every weekend. That's really not a vacation or a break - it's just more of the mundane tasks of life. I know those things are necessary and I do them myself all the time - sometimes I do ONLY those things on a given weekend.

But after a little while, I just start getting agitated and restless and I stop and ask myself what is wrong with me! 9 times out of 10 it's that I haven't been on an adventure out out of town in a while. I haven't felt ALIVE for a while - and I need that. It's like pinching yourself to see if you are still conscious.