The Truth About Drifting Around
As someone who drifts around more often than stays in one place, there is really only one thing I can say about it: it gets lonely.
It's great to experience a million different places, things, foods, and people. But it's horrible being far away from everyone you hold dear. It's hard to not have a place called home. It's hard watching people move on and forget you. It's hard hearing about great news and not being there to celebrate alongside everyone. It's even harder to hear the bad things happen and be unable to physically be there to console and show support and love.
Spending three hours lost in Germany and relying on nothing but the kindness of strangers was a slap in the face. I was in a world where I knew no one and could not understand the language. It made me evaluate people in my life: who is a friend, and who is just a kind stranger? I suppose in my life... I know a lot of kind strangers. Friends, I have few. So few, so dear... yet so distant.
The truth about drifting around is that you can't really get to know people deeply. You'll be roommates and share a few secrets and frustrations. You'll complain about your horrible manager or coworker.. you'll share inside jokes... and then you part ways as strangers. You'll like a couple of their pictures... laugh at a few of their Facebook statuses. You'll bash on Trump with them on social media, and sometimes a random meme will make you ponder tagging them. You'll congratulate them on their engagement to a stranger you've never known existed, and you realize you don't even remember how you met.
Then there are the people that you by chance... did get to know dearly, whether it was through a crazy experience together, or you made this friend before you began to drift. You'll start to notice new people pop up on their social media, and you'll diminish your friendship with them. You'll start to realize that they're closer to strangers than they are to you. You begin to alienate yourself because you don't feel like you belong in their life anymore. And then, you slowly disappear from their life, and they from yours. And you will wistfully remember all the times when... and that time when... and then wonder what happened to that special bond.
There are a few people that you keep in contact with, but it feels almost as if you aren't. You aren't really ever there, and it feels kind of just like "Oh hey, here's an update. Btw, is this guy hot or not? Dump or keep?" It becomes almost like a plastic relationship... something that needs to be recycled by either seeing each other, or just letting it squash into nothingness and start anew.
These are just some late night thoughts by a flight attendant who has been feeling a bit down these days. Don't let that discourage you from the amazing life of a flight attendant: because it really is an awesome job. Every job has it's ups and downs, and I have been living a rather nomadic life long before becoming a flight attendant :)
