Steal My Heart and Fly Me Away

"You steal my heart
And you take my breath away...

...How can I stand here with you
And not be moved by you?"

~  from "Everything" by Lifehouse

I live on the flight path for McCarran International Airport. Planes fly over the courtyard outside my apartment every few minutes. I've gotten pretty good at identifying the various airlines as they rise overhead. Purple and orange - Southwest. White with U-N-I-T-E-D written on the underbelly - United. Blue and red tail fin - Delta. Bright yellow and blue - Spirit. I watch them fly and I am always envious. Always. The people on those planes...They're going somewhere. Vacation, work, family, friends, home. They might be sad, happy or a mix of both. They might be with the love of their life or going to see them. They might be newly married, newly rich, or new poor (I live in Vegas, after all). For each plane and each passenger, there is a different reason and a different emotion. As I watch them soar overhead, the only thing I want - the absolute only thing - is to be going somewhere.

Where? Part of me doesn't care. That part of me just wants to go, travel, leave my wash-rinse-repeat life behind. The other part of me - the biggest part - knows exactly where it wants to go. No place, no person comes close.

Maybe it's because I'm kind of stuck right now. At least I feel stuck. I'm broke, in a new city, without a ready-made pet sitter and no side-hustle. Maybe it's because I can't that makes me want to travel even more than usual. I don't have anything booked; there's no countdown. I can't fritter my stress away planning and re-planning my next trip. Right now today - November 10, 2019 - there is no "next trip" and the brutal truth is that I don't have a clue when I will travel again.

Which is probably why I've been spending an extreme amount of time (i.e. more than my normal pre-move to Las Vegas usual) scrolling through my Instagram feed, a feed that includes a preponderance of photos of Sweden and Scandinavia (plus lighthouses, sailboats, and other travel destinations. I do follow two dogs. I'll give you one guess where they both live...). That's it, you know. All of it. Why I can't stand my life. Why wash-rinse-repeat just isn't working anymore. Why I'm off balance emotionally and spiritually. Why I'm coming more and more un-tethered with each day that passes.

I don't miss much about my old life. I don't miss friends and people and work wives. I surely don't miss Austin. What I do miss - what brings me to my knees (figuratively speaking) - is the knowing, the assurance...that it's only a matter of time....that I'll go back....that I'll be "home." Soon. At any given moment, back in the day, I could have told you almost to the minute exactly how soon.

And now... I don't even want to imagine the countdown. It feels like decades, though I know that's an exaggeration. How much of one, I don't feel like estimating. I have a lot of arranging to do and money to save. As it stands, I live paycheck-to-paycheck with little time or energy for any kind of side-hustle. Maybe one day it'll all come together. Patience, they say. This is just my time to take a step back. I want to scream "F*** THAT!" but I don't. I'm too polite. And really, what good would it do?

I wish I could explain it. My infatuation. It began long before I got my passport and bought my first ticket. It was this niggling "thing" that dwelled deep inside me for as long I can remember. Little by little it grew stronger until I finally swiped right on Expedia sometime in my late forties. It's because I'm Scandinavian? I think that's what my mom hoped when she did the ancestry DNA thing. Maybe it was some latent Viking blood in our veins pulling at me, leading me "home." Oh, it's not that. I'm about as Scandinavian as everyone in the world with DNA links to the British Isles, which is to say a percent or two. So, it's not DNA. Or a woman (my fascination with Alicia VIkander aside). Or a mid-life crisis. Four trips in three years later, it's still a mystery.

Look, I expected to cross the border into Sweden, pass a few nice days, shrug my shoulders, and spend my next vacation is Paris or London or Rome. I was sick when I first set foot in Sweden, in Malmo. I took a bus from the train station to the airport, rented a car, and drove up the western coast to Gothenburg. I was dizzy and crampy. Still I stopped in Helsingborg and Bastad just to see. I listened to American country music as I drove and came to understand why Swedes settled in Minnesota - the rolling farm land seemed identical. After a few days in Gothenburg I took the train to Stockholm. I discovered the ins and outs of the Tunnelbana and found my way to my hotel deep in Sodermalm. Then I took walk. I climbed a hill. At the top of that hill, I saw Stockholm for the first time. And I fell in love.

Before that first trip, someone told me that I would fall in love with Stockholm as I would a lover but that I would grow to love Gothenburg as I would a best friend. I admit I was skeptical, turns out he was right. Sitting here in a Starbuck's in Las Vegas, Nevada, I miss them both and I don't know when I will see them again.

People ask me all the time why I don't go other places. It's a big world, Stacee and you've only seen a fraction of it. What about Asia? Or an African safari? Or Madrid or Prague or, or, or....the list goes on and on. I've been other places - Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Croatia - and I've liked them all. There's a lot more I'd like to see and experience. But... When I see the planes flying overhead the only place I want to go - REALLY want to go - is the place that - as crazy as it sounds - feels most like "home" to me, Sweden.

But... I am stuck. Currently. At the moment. For the duration. In the meantime, until the next countdown, until I'm finally on my way again...I have my memories and my Instagram feed. They'll have to be enough.

Until...I'm on my way home again.