The Life of a Traveler: An Outsider at Home

I remember stepping off the plane. 

My feet touched the rickety steps as I held closely to the railing and I remember the heat pulsing in the air around me. It was almost suffocating yet simultaneously a welcome reprieve from home. 

Home―I remember noting the differences between where I was in that moment and where I had been earlier, the differences between that country and my own. The weather, the language, the volcano looming in the distance: it all called out to me, screaming, begging me to acknowledge where I was. It begged me to acknowledge a dream that was at last making itself a reality.

A foreigner―that’s what I was in that beautiful new land. Any connection I’d felt to the mountains and sea in that country was my knowledge alone. It was only in my head, in my heart. From my accent to the awe in my eyes, I was an outsider to everyone else.

I thrived in that new environment. I loved and let go of the guidelines which once held together my everyday. I forced myself to do new things because I knew I would never do them at home so why not here? What regrets would terrorize me in the future if I didn’t break free of the restrictions of my anxieties while in a foreign country? 

Those weeks weigh on me like a dream I long to relive. If you go by the stares of the locals, you’d assume that I never did fit in there. But if you went by my emotions you would see how comfortable I felt in the uncertainty of life in those strange and beautiful places. You would see how okay I was without having a plan, the contentment that filled every crevice of my heart at having the ability to wander without direction.

When I returned home, I expected relief and, in a sense, I suppose that did come. Weeks away from home make you long for the things you love that were left behind. But something else came with my return too―I was an outsider here as much as I was halfway around the world. I felt foreign in my own home, as though I’d taken a breather from my everyday and returned to find it strange and no longer mine. I was changed and longed for the normalcy I’d constructed for myself as a foreigner abroad―but in the same moment I also longed for my parents, my siblings, my family, my house. I longed for the comforts which had been mine before I left.

About the Author

Kapri Koflanovich is a Senior Integrated Marketing and Creative Writing Major with a Minor in Spanish. She is a Poetry and Fiction Co-editor for Quiddity and the Public Relations Officer for ASL Club. In her free time, Kapri loves reading, writing, and dancing. She hopes to work for a publishing company after graduation and eventually write her own book. Kapri is so thankful to have worked on Quiddity since her sophomore year and to have been published in her final semester at Arcadia University. She sends best wishes to all future Quiddity staff & writers!