Just boarded, and realized that there was a forgotten item.

Goddamnit!

The first part of this journey begins with an item left behind, as journeys tend to begin (at least, with me.) I had been gushing about my new camera lens for a week, taking care to make sure that it arrived in New York in time for me to take it to Chiang Mai with me. And now, it sits sadly in a forgotten corner between the door and my bedroom wall.

It's a fitting start that I'd leave behind something that would help me cope, help me start anew and make fresh, beautiful memories of the new place that will occupy the next chapter of my life. Maybe it's an indication—or a betrayal—of how I feel about leaving behind what seems like everything important in my life. I am unprepared, to say the least, to throw myself into this new world.

I am terrified.

I wish I didn't feel so unstable, so insecure, so goddamn vulnerable—I wish I could feel the reckless excitement that I had felt when I was heading off to Kyoto and Johannesburg that summer of my sophomore year. I was ready for a change of scenery then, desperate for a chance to discover and/or rediscover the part of me that Princeton hadn't claimed yet. I was hungry for a new beginning. I was ready to swallow the world whole.

But that sense of fearless, even foolhardy adventurousness is gone, and gone when I'd most needed it. All I can feel right now is a terrible sadness and sense of fated helplessness, like I will always be destined to drag a suitcase around, to be a citizen of everywhere and therefore nowhere. All I can hear are my dad's words when, during our department reception, he and the administrator were chitchatting over my fellowship, and of my wanderlust: "It's always been very hard to catch her!"

My mom has patiently assured me that she'd find a way to ship my camera over to me when I give her a permanent address—essentially, when I find a home to settle down in. Will I only truly be able to make this place my own when I'm ready to accept its permanent role to play in my life?

I know that this is silly. It's actually really stupid; I even have another back-up point-and-shoot camera that I brought with me, so what do I have to really complain about besides my unbearably characteristic first-world problems? My excuse is that I'm a lit. major—I can't help but read too deeply, too critically, into things that sometimes can't lend themselves to that kind of analysis. And I don't think I'm really fooling anyone; clearly, the issue here isn't really the camera. But there is a perverse sense of comfort in interpreting this as a kind of purposed narrative, rather than own up to what it ultimately is: me just being super careless with my things, and me using that as an excuse to vent out my insecurities about going to a new place.