The Geography of Identity

What Leaving Teaches Us and What Staying Costs

I left my small hometown for the military just four months after turning eighteen. Since then, I’ve rarely stayed anywhere longer than three years. Travel isn’t something I do. It’s how I’ve come to understand myself.

For a long time, I thought my fascination with travel was about seeing new places. Looking back, I’ve realized it was more about freedom.

I wasn’t afraid of staying in one place. I was afraid of being reduced to a single version of myself.

In my mind, staying in the same place meant putting myself in a box. It meant everyone thought they already knew everything there was to know about me. They knew my mistakes, the things I’d outgrown, the relationship I stayed in well past its expiration date, and eventually my identity began to feel sealed. The feeling of being frozen in other people’s version of me always felt more terrifying than starting over from scratch. So, I treated every new assignment like a possibility. I found comfort in knowing there would always be a departure date, that whatever wasn’t working could eventually be left behind. Wherever I ended up next, I got to decide who I was before anyone else did.

Experiencing life in new places introduces me to parts of myself I couldn’t have met otherwise. Different places ask different things of us. Different seasons of life reveal different strengths, fears, and desires. I don’t know that we can ever truly discover our whole selves all at once or from just one place. I think we spend our lives gathering pieces. A city teaches us something. A relationship teaches us something else. A career, a heartbreak, a friendship, a loss. Each one hands us another piece of the puzzle.

Some part of me thought I was always supposed to associate leaving with loss. But what if we spent as much time wondering what we might lose by staying? What if the place we’re afraid to leave is keeping us from discovering another piece of ourselves?

I don’t know if the learning and growing ever end. I certainly hope they don’t. I think I’d feel stuck and sad in whatever world that is.

The person I’ll be ten years from now is a stranger to me. Maybe I’ll finally want the forever home that I can’t imagine today. Or maybe I’ll still be chasing the feeling of arriving somewhere new. I’ve stopped trying to predict which version of me will be the final one.

I’m much more interested in meeting the next one.