Ritual Union

I travel for the glam and the gore
Reinventing yourself is such a big American phenomenon. I think retracing yourself should be as well. Perhaps you'll think I am overexaggerating, but I left a life here. I just abandoned it and started over. I have a habit of doing this. Thanks to this habit, I have stories that belong in a novel; I have friends all over the world, I have pictures worth 1000 words and I have scattered pieces of my heart in many places. Of course, I stuffed much of my Madrid experience into my heart and I always carry it with me.
I feel compelled to be up to my old habits, to go to all my favorite watering holes, and to love Madrid in the precise way I learned to love it. Unlike other times I've sought solace and refuge in the European continent, I didn't run from something this time, I ran TO it. However, I did not come to be transported back to being 22. I came to bridge my life now with my life then, and to make them one. This is proving very challenging- emotionally and physically. It's not fun to be on the Madrid time schedule and go to sleep at six in the morning then sit in a law school classroom three hours later. It's also proving a true test of the timber of my heart, to reminisce and to so clearly visualize the different turns and decisions I could have so easily made in a different direction.
This is not a post about regrets, but one about habits. "Ritual unions have got me in trouble again. I was wondering, of the white dress, and a mistress, a spirit holding my hand." (Little Dragon) This is a series of thoughts and fears about reaching into the future and into the past simultaneously. About redefining. About growth.

Traveling and globe wandering to the absurd extent that I have  boasts a lot of glamour. Let me remind you, in 2013 I lived for four months in Africa and four months in London. In 2013, my feet stepped on the sovereign ground of THIRTEEN nations. Oooh, you swoon, sitting at your desk. 
But there is also gore. 
It has immense challenges. 
I won't conflate such a discussion in this post for fear of you incorrectly thinking that I am ungrateful, or trying to make a statement that travel is not "all it's chalked up to be." Travel, in fact, is so much MORE than any one chalks it up to be, that it is a gift that keeps giving, keeps challenging, keeps pouring out blessings.
This harvest of blessings is hard on my heart.

Learning to strike the balance between roots and branches, yet how to mold my own past self with a new future self in order to be one content mono-polar human really has me pensive (and playing this song on repeat).