For as long as I can remember I've been a bit of a fantasist. I grew up in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and I can still remember playing with my friends around the endless fields, streams & barns that surrounded us. The games we used to imagine, the made up mythical situations we'd get ourselves into. Like the imaginary witches we'd flee from the steep hill behind my house or the fairies we were so convinced we had spotted next to the burn behind the stables.
As I grew up that fantasist side of me never left. While everyone else was sitting in uni lectures thinking about their next drink or what they were wearing to the student union that night, I would be tapping my pen impatiently, imagining where I might be in ten years time. Lost in some romantic creation I had decided upon in my head, like drinking wine & writing poetry in the South of France or backpacking along the Inca Trail. To this day I'm still a ridiculous romantic with a wild imagination. I don't want to believe that movie style love doesn't exist or that there isn't some fatalistic & spiritual plan set out for every single one of us.
I believe what I choose to believe because that is who I am & it is who I want to be.
My constant need to explore this beautiful country and to escape this (sometimes) depressing city doesn't worry me. The romantic idealisms I associate with these trips act like an anti-depressant. They keep me happy, they feed my wild, romantic notions and I imagine they will still be keeping me young at heart when I am late into my sixties.
Whatever I may appear - be it over-dramatic, self-indulgent or a pathetic hippie with her head in the clouds, my life is a perpetual battle against a continuous need to run & a constant urge to escape. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
I feed off a constant need for adventure. And so I keep chasing the next sanctuary, the next loch, the next B&B, the next road trip and the next night away. I long for vast expanses of water, I escape into 5 mile runs, and I lose myself in endless episodes of Outlander or chapters of Iain Banks novels.
I escape into my fantasies of growing old on some random Scottish island. I escape into the books, the poems, the endless castle exploring and the old Scottish folk songs.
But no matter how much I escape there is no question of where or with who my heart belongs. Which is in this thriving & multi-cultural city that I have grown to adore. With a baby girl who grows quicker and faster by the day and who most definitely needs her desire for siblings met before I retire away.
So in the meantime I shall continue on my one woman quest to see as much of Scotland as I can. To explore every single nook and cranny in order to find the pivotal place I shall choose to end up. But make no mistake - when that day eventually comes you will find me up north somewhere. Growing old on an island, breathing in the rural & wild Scottish mountainous air every single morning. Cooking, writing & excitedly planning the grandchildren's next visit.
And I can't wait.
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