Why Displaced Kids Become Nomadic Adults

Displaced Kid to Nomadic Adult

If you walked down the driveway past the enormous pink house to the pink, of course, driveway; you could find a young girl planning an escape. Drawing up blueprints and trying to fashion her own go-cart style minivan with enough room to house two younger sisters, two cousins, and the cute boy who lived down the street. She was always an adventuress and a dreamer… that need to explore became so much stronger as her life started to slowly break to pieces that would become scattered across South Minneapolis.

After my parents divorce my family sunk into poverty for reasons that are not for me to share publicly, After this section 8 and Food stamps became an embarrassing way of life. Moving from house to house, duplex to duplex, mom from job to job, became a way of life. I would often hear my mom say “Brettina I know you really wanted to live here, but they don’t take section 8.” fewer and fewer places, in fact, took section 8 and the more we moved the more I got used to different surroundings, different neighborhoods, not setting up my room with posters of my favorite boy bands or my latest celebrity crush..not like the other girls. There were always boxes and boxes, suitcases. So once I got to college, I followed the same pattern, I never liked or even wanted to live with the same people for more than a year. The college I attended was even nicknamed “the suitcase place.” How fitting

The need to travel still has not evaded me. Last night I had one of my routine breakdowns where I was so bored of my current life that all I could do was breath and dream.

Dream of a beach with ivory sand that spread as far as you could even see. The water would be so fucking clear you could see your feet and if you swam a little further colorful fish would nibble at your toes. I imagined walking out of that water, in a scandalous red bikini, tilting my head back and soaking up the sun, thanking the creator for this life for this gift.

Why?

The kid, most of the time in poverty, who is displaced ends up exhibiting the same kind of lifestyle as an adult. Nowhere feels like home because home changed so many times in their youth. The need to travel starts with home to home and sometimes can grow to State to State. Routines become boring, boring to the extent of causing slight depression or anxiety, something new becomes the best adrenaline of all.

Displaced kids live out of a suitcase modeled and made into belongings. As they travel they either take in the scenery or buy trinkets to hoard. From my experience either “things” become obsolete and unnecessary or they become the most precious things of all. The biggest part of being a displaced kid is the change in scenery. The need for scene one to end, skip scene two, and go right to scene three.

The interesting thing with myself and many displaced living style kids is the type of vacations we choose. Unlike nomad hippies who usually had a solid upbringing in their middle-class childhood home, displaced kid nomadic adults can go on a trip where they are in a Four-star hotel with lavish dinners to solitude and a warm blanket in an old fashioned yurt. Home, for the time being, becomes anywhere they lay their head.

Personally, I exhibit another quality quite interesting,

Vacations feel like home to me, but I still need a base. I need an actual home base because I wasn’t able to really have one in my previous years. I wonder if any other displaced kid feels the same?

Where ever you are in the world, displaced kid who evolved into a nomadic adult, I want to let you know that we can find a home, belonging, and safety. Even if we never find it in this world we can still create it in our head, at least until we reach our goals so we can travel whenever we want. I hope you are working toward the lifestyle you want, as I am trying to work on mine.

“Lie your head down weary traveler, for you have traveled oh so long and deserve to belong if only for a day.” -Pantera

References:

All photos were free for use.

Suitcase Photo one: Unsplash, Pixbay  https://pixabay.com/en/luggage-packed-travel-trip-1081872/

Girl with suitcase: JFXie, Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/jfxie/14563024891