If I had to get a tattoo right now: I think it would be Moon River
Not just the words, maybe a small moon resting above a river that disappears somewhere beyond the horizon. Something simple, something that doesn’t need to explain itself. Because, in many ways, that’s how I have lived my life: drifting. I have spent a long time feeling as though my worth was connected to what I could offer. Useful when there was something I could give, and easier to let go of when there wasn’t. And perhaps somewhere along the way, I learned to leave before anyone had the chance to tell me that I was no longer needed. Even when I sense that my usefulness is coming to an end, I don’t fight, I don’t complain, I don’t always say yes or no. I just become quiet, I observe and eventually, I pick up my things and go.
Maybe that’s why Moon River has always felt bigger than a song to me. There is something about the idea of drifting that I understand too well. Drifting doesn’t require you to explain why you’re leaving. A river doesn’t apologise for moving. It simply follows the current because standing still was never what it was made to do. Maybe you could call that self-sabotage. Maybe there are times when I have left before anyone asked me to. Maybe I’ve mistaken uncertainty for rejection and silence for a sign that I no longer belong. I don’t know. But drifting is what I know. When you don’t know what else you have to offer, when you’re unsure whether your presence is wanted, leaving can feel easier than asking someone to convince you to stay.
The strange thing is that people can call you cold after you’ve spent your whole life trying not to be a burden. They can call you distant because you ran away. They can say you weren’t willing to fight, without ever asking how many fights you had already fought inside yourself before you left. But what kind of life do I want to live? Do I want to spend it shouting at the top of my lungs, trying to convince people to hear me when my silence was never noticed? Or do I simply go with the current and accept that not every place is meant to be home? These are the questions I still carry. Because underneath all the drifting, I think there is still a part of me that wants to stay. A part of me that wants to put up a fight. Not for usefulness, not for permission to exist, but for the possibility of being somewhere I don’t have to constantly wonder whether I belong.
So perhaps I would get that tattoo as a reminder, not that I am destined to drift forever, but that drifting has been part of my story. If you ever find me, please understand that there may be a part of me already preparing to leave. Not because I don’t care. Sometimes it is because I care too much and don’t know what to do with the fear of becoming unwanted. I’ve been given an hour to admit something to myself: maybe I have always been leaving, whether by choice or by habit. Maybe I’ve become so familiar with goodbye that even staying feels foreign.
But I hope that isn’t where the story ends.
I hope one day I find my own destination. Not a place where I am useful enough to be kept, but a place where I am known enough to stay. And maybe when I finally get there, I’ll look at that little moon and river on my skin and remember all the places I passed through trying to find it.
Until then, if you ever find me:
just know that I’ve been drifting for a long time.