My suffering is complete. The only antidote is travel. Anywhere. For any amount of time. I must break free from my changeless ways and fly into the world.

After day after day of working in a small, windowless room, I seek the fix of sunshine and entertainment and rampages of the unexpected. Sure. I can dip into adventures of the past. I can. And I do.

I’ve slept on yachts and sang lullabies to orphans and shared snacks with refugees and dated royalty and bathed in mountain streams with only wildflowers as witness. I’ve lost my way in the ghettos of foreign lands, climbed dunes, rode camels, and argued about foreign policy in foreign languages, badly.

I’ve swum with stingrays, experimented with love--that that travel elixir, slept in castles and slow-baked fresh-caught salmon over camp fires. I’ve walked beaches at midnight where the sun was high in the sky--sunscreen at midnight.

Voyaging imprints a twinkle of madness into my days. I crave more. I always crave more.

I ate snails and rattlesnake and alligator and bear and crickets and chicken stomachs stuffed with sweet meats.

Travel is like a new lover; I’m left satisfied, yet wanting more. Even when it rains or snows or it’s too loud or terribly uncomfortable.... I’m mostly unscathed by the extreme discomfort and the rude people and those many wrong directions.

For me getting out of my comfort zone is like playing house; it’s just for fun. Getting lost in the Red Light District of Amsterdam becomes a joke, as if we were shopping for lingerie. And that time they mistakenly locked us in the wine cellar of that prestigious $1000 a bottle winery was nothing more than a giggle of courage where we wondered if we could survive four days on--wine, then they unlocked the door and let us out.

Airports accentuate possibilities. I walk around concourses, dreaming. Every gate could connect me to a new place, a distant Narnia where I might dip my toes into a different sea. I crave choices. Mexico City. Los Angeles. Beijing. Paris. Quito.

With time to spare I wander to an international gate and try to guess who is traveling for the adventure of it. 75% of the people, I figure, but this is just a story I’m making up. I can’t tell. Everyone looks a mixture of smug and bored, not unlike a waiting room at a doctor’s office.

I’m like a cheerleader before a football game; excitement flies out my smile, my eyes, my hands. I’m at the airport about to board a plane that will place me in a different location just for the fun of it.

Today I travel.

I’m heading to Denver, my home for twenty years. This is my first reunion to see friends and places and dabble in connections.

When there, I’ll stay up late and get up early and forget to sleep and shower fast so I don’t lose any time being… there.

But it's not enough. No matter how many times I get lost in the world, I'm never satiated. That's my affliction: never enough. More adventure. More places. More storeis. More more more more. I want to visit Goa and Vietnam and Honduras and Russia... I must wait for my savings to match my desire.

Perhaps this spoon-feeding of travel lures me out of myself and into the places I've never been. I may not have the most exciting travel itinerary with years between trips, but I live with a strong knowing that all of these places will be visited. One at a time.

My affliction is my addiction.

Today I travel.

YOUR Love Died in Orlando | Holly Winter

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