In which I reflect on the gypsy bone.

My brother recently sent me a message on Skype that I can't for the life of me find again, because he has crazy privacy settings on that shit. He is weird about social media and the Internet and not telling the world every single little thing about himself in the history of being like, for example, by blogging on the daily- hi, Jack!- but it essentially, in paraphrasing, said something like this:



'You go here and there, forever on the outskirts of every friendship group you have ever made, never quite belonging and always with one foot out of the door. Other people don't like this, but you don't know any other way to be. It's like you are weird and not normal and a bit broken.'



And at first I was like, MEANIE! but then the last bit said, 'But this doesn't make you broken. It makes you a writer' and then I was a bit more like AWWWWW.



He sent me this because he has had the same core friends for ten years and although a traveller- I have 11 different cell numbers for him, one for every country he has travelled to in the past 4 years- he is really quite well-adapted and stable and lives in the same place for more than six months at a time and doesn't just spin a globe and put his finger on it and say THERE. I'LL BE THERE FOR A BIT.



The total opposite of his sister, then.



Also, because I have spent the past twenty minutes Googling that quotation or approximate variations thereof to find its owner, if anything awful happens to me today and I die the police will see that the last things I searched for on the Internet were 'Forever on the outskirts of every friendship group' and 'never belonging' and 'nothing really fits' which will basically make it seem like sad and lonely suicide but this isn't A Single Man this is my life and I really just wanted to know who said that shit because I find it to be remarkably applicable to my very contented and friend-filled life.



EXCEPT THAT IT ISN'T CONTENTED BECAUSE I WANT TO LEAVE ROME.



This is isolating for many reasons:



1. Who, in the history of the world since Eat, Pray, Love declares that Rome doesn't make them happy? WHO?



2. Urm, if I don't want to live in Rome then where do I want to live?



3. Fuck me. When suddenly choosing where you would like to try to have a life based on the criteria 'not England' and 'either really hot or really cold' suddenly the world is like, huge, and sometimes this is empowering and exciting and other times just makes me want to take a tub of orange-chocolate gelato into bed and whimper as I suck on the spoon.



In my head I'm all, LAURA. STAY IN ONE PLACE FOR A BIT but then my heart is all like, STAY IN ONE PLACE? BUT THIS PLACE HAS CHANGED YOU FOREVER ALREADY. IT'S TIME TO MOVE ON. And then my head gets all, BUT YOU'LL NEVER BE HAPPY IF KEEP MOVING and my heart is all, YOU'LL NEVER BE HAPPY STAYING IN THE SAME OLD TIRED PLACE and then my brain explodes because isn't that just it? I've got the gypsy bone, and that means I ain't never gonna rest til I've done and seen ALL THE THINGS.



Why can't I just be happy to be born and live and die in the same place?



Oh, oh, oh! Actually, I know the answer to this one. It's because I don't want to live and die IN DERBY. Now I remember.



So where does that leave me? It leaves me in cafes around the world writing about my vagina until I get bored and go to another country and write about my vagina there. Which really isn't such a terrible way to be now I've boiled it down to that one sentence. Yes. To the next person who asks me what I do I'll just nonchalantly wave a hand and say, 'Visit cafes around the world,' and that will have to be enough.



It will have to be.



I just wish I could pack up all the awesome people I meet on the way and have them travel in my pocket with me. Because that's the hardest part. The goodbye.



To my friends: WHY CAN'T YOU BE POCKET-SIZED GODDAMN? WHY?