I am a contradiction. A paradox of a woman.

I see his face and I know I’m home.

I picture him all the time.

I haven’t met him yet but I know he is coming.

I’ve seen my first child too, a little mess of blonde curls.

A smaller daintier version of me.

I love them so much it hurts. I don’t even know their names.

They are as real to me as this pen I hold in my hand.

I look up and see the ocean before me.

I want to feel the sand in-between my toes on every beach from here to home.

I want to love as many feral hearts as I can along the way.

I want to know what it means to dance in every country. Not the movements so much but the sense of joy you can feel enter your bones.

I want to know what the air smells like at every airport in the split second that the doors open as you get off the plane.

I want to feel the wind in my hair on every boat that exists on the pathways of water that carve up this earth.

I want to see a multitude of traffic jams, and roundabouts that are just a big swirl of Tuk Tuks and cows and mopeds and trucks that never seem to end.

I want to feel at home.

I want a community that knows my name and what I do and what my children like to eat for tea.

I want to have a legacy. To leave something behind that tells future generations that I was here.

I want to walk to my parents’ house and take care of them long after they’ve forgotten my face and my name.

I want to be connected, and independent.

I want to feel loved, and free.

I want to travel, and stay home.

I want to be me in a world that says I must choose ‘either/or’.

I want to choose ‘and’.

I want to have it all.