Dating : “Your Gypsy Vibe Terrifies Me”

That Gypsy Vibe

Living out of a suitcase is not a lifestyle that most people can grasp. I get that. But, somewhere around the time that I moved all of my belongings into a storage unit and ditched the concept of a physical address, I started ignoring most people.

I think that happens when you quit a conventional lifestyle with things like routines, nine-to-five jobs, and daily responsibilities, and start connecting with fellow nomads who make ends meet by writing, or bartending, or teaching — people who can’t imagine working in an office, or submitting to the seemingly overwhelming commitment of rent or mortgage payments.

Out here on the road, we wake up on one beach lovers’ island only to hire a fisherman on a whim to cruise us to the neighboring island just because someone said a good band might be playing.

I think of this lifestyle as liberating rather than scary. Though I admit that there was a time when I listened to all the naysayers who wondered if I had lost my damn mind. But in order to have the sheer, crazy guts to quit my job and pack that first suitcase, I just had to stop fretting about what other people thought.

Until now.

“Your gypsy vibe terrifies me.”

He said this at that dinner some three hours drive away from my departure airport.

I am still settling on the appropriate descriptor to use to emphasize the intense blue of his eyes, but those eyes surveyed me closely as though assessing my ability to stay in one place long enough to finish my salad.

His half-smile gave away the half humor he found in our predicament — meeting just days before I was set to leave again — but he didn’t bother to disguise the whole fear he felt at getting involved with a woman with no known address.

I tried to explain the freedom that comes with being a nomad: I can move anywhere, really, you see. I mean, that is, after I spend some time in France and Belgium and walk 450 miles along the Camino Trail….

All the wonder and joy that I’ve found with my nomadic lifestyle suddenly felt unstable and chaotic seated next to this very stable, very beautiful man. “Your travel schedule,” he said, that same smile playing around his mouth and a hand resting lightly against my thigh beneath the table, “is not ideal.”

Later he would say that it would have been more politically correct to say that my “nomad” vibe terrifies him, but he didn’t take the sentiment back.

I do mean later, like the next day later, because I definitely changed my flight to stay an extra night with those intensely blue eyes.

And then I got on that plane.

I write this from my happy place in the Loire Valley, the same place where I learned to ride a bike again after 20 years and the same place that helped me to heal when my heart ached the most.

I know that I need a little more time out here for me. Just a little more time to be a bit selfish and fully focused on becoming the better version of me that losing Jeff has inspired. But I also know that I’m ready to date again. To feel again.

Only time will tell what will happen with this possible love story but, for the first time in a year, I think there might just be a reason to have a physical address again.