Seagulls along the shore during a family trip to Indiana Dunes.
I don’t swim. Actually, I can’t swim. I never learned. It’s not a big deal to me and it makes perfect sense: under the age of 10 I was around a pool maybe once a year on a random family trip that involved a Holiday Inn.
Because of it I don’t like boats much. I could care less about water sports. One of my worst nightmares involves being on a bridge that collapses into icy water Mothman Prophecies style (sorry if that’s a spoiler alert, but that movie came out 11 years ago so you have no excuse to get mad). A friend in middle school once asked me what I’d do if I was in a plane crash over the water and had to swim for survival. I told her I’d probably die of a heart attack long before swimming became an issue.
But despite this lack of interest to be physically on the water, I recently couldn’t escape the fact that I miss it. Or living near it, rather.
When I was 10 and my family moved to the northern tip of Gulfport, Mississippi, we were a 5-10 drive to the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. It was normal to look at the water when I took a trip to the library, to go shopping for new back to school clothing, to eat dinner out on a Saturday night. Parking lots were sprinkled with seagulls. Halloween day could be spent at the beach. When we moved over to Louisiana we grew accustomed to watching the freighters go by on the Mississippi River. Then Katrina happened–another water-related nightmare–and we headed back home again to Indiana.
The series of moves during my childhood had presented an instability of sorts. It was always an adventure and I look back on everything fondly as we so often do of our experiences growing up. But the lack of an official home, a childhood structure to return to or a city that I can nod toward and call my hometown, gives me a unique situation. I wanted to feel settled, to establish roots, and with the Indy area being the only place that’s ever really felt like home, I knew I wanted to settle here.
But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about leaving Indy these past few months. It wasn’t something I planned. It was just a feeling that appeared, a sense that there’s so much out there I need to do and see.
It’s not that Indy has failed me on any level, that it hasn’t provided me creative, professional and social nourishment, that I haven’t met people who are interesting, friendly, and inspiring. This city is exceptional and so is the community I’ve been slowly building. That’s why I’ve been feeling so darn guilty about it. Instead it’s a deep rooted characteristic I didn’t quite know I possessed. It’s the one that has me looking at pictures of Charleston, of swooning at bloggers’ pictures of their walk down their streets in Arlington, of looking up towns I hear about on TV or see mentioned in a magazine article. It’s the one that has me thinking a lot about the relaxing lull of the water on the shore and the gentle salty breezes that tickle your senses, especially on days like today where my focus is little. It’s the same one my parents possess that led them to move almost 1000 miles away from their home state for the first time as they approached 50 (okay, that partly involved a desire to never use a snow shovel again). It’s a need for adventure, a sense of feeling somewhat claustrophobic.
Maybe it’s just a simple, curable wanderlust. Maybe it can be solved with a burst of travel and exploration, something I’ve been slim on lately. When I’ve been away, whether Nashville for a semester or Athens, Georgia, for a summer, I’ve always found myself counting down until the time I could return home. But I can’t say for sure. I once wrote that I knew life was crazy enough I couldn’t say I’d live here forever, and maybe I won’t after all. Or maybe I will. For now all I can say is that when I drive through the countryside on my way home from events in the city, as I watch the summer sun beginning to set, casting a golden glow on the farms and trees that have seen decades of our history, I never feel more at home.
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Sarah Eutsler is a freelance writer, the founder & editor of twentysomething Indy, and owner of On a Good Note Designs, an online stationery and gift shop. She’s a proud DePauw grad and active Delta Gamma alumna. When she’s not busy running around trying to do everything, she’s fueling her addictions to magazines and How I Met Your Mother or trying to blog here. Don’t be shy! Follow her and say hello on Twitter.
