Am I Broken? And Is That What Makes Me a Good Nomad?

I don't have as many close friends as Brent. And I may not need them in quite the same way.

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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As nomads, Brent and I usually lead very active social lives. We hang out with a mix of expats and nomads — some new friends and some old ones — and because we’re slow travelers, we usually make local friends too.

But we spent the last six months in Asia, and it was different: we didn’t see many other people.

We did a ten-day road trip through central Japan with friends and met up with a few other people here and there.

Other than that, it was just us. For the first time in forever, we even spent Christmas alone.

I barely noticed.

Brent noticed. He noticed it a lot. He felt the absence of connecting with people — the lack of a wider circle, the feeling of rootlessness that comes from not regularly being around truly good friends.

It even prompted some conversations about our future: what life would look like if we stopped nomading, and whether and when we might settle down.

He wants a place where we can host dinner parties, have game nights, and deck the halls for a Christmas that involves more than just the two of us. He wants to build something more permanent and communal.

And I agree that sounds nice — very nice.

But for me, it comes at a steep cost: namely, giving up our nomadic life that I love deeply.

It’s also a life that fits me like a glove.

At one point, Brent said, “You don’t miss people the way I do. You don’t need them.”

It wasn’t an accusation. It was something he’d observed about me — and not for the first time.

And he isn’t wrong. I’m “independent.” And while that’s made it very easy for me to be nomadic, it’s also made me wonder: am I broken in some way? Do I not need people because there is something fundamentally wrong with me?

And if so, why am I this way?

Twenty-six-year-old me hitchhiking in Australia.

To be clear, I’m not a hermit. I do like people.

I enjoy meeting others on the road, and I value the friendships that form there. A few of them have deepened into relationships I genuinely cherish. I also maintain contact with a small number of friends from my pre-nomadic life, and I make every effort to see them when geography allows.

But when I stack my relationships next to Brent’s, the difference is stark.

He has friendships spanning more than fifty years. He still has friends from grade school, high school, and college — one of whom died recently. He’s been getting together for regular weekends with one group of guys for fifty years — and now they do online gaming together every week.

I don’t have anything like that. In fact, most of Brent’s and my “mutual” long-term friends are people he met first.

I have no real friends from elementary school or high school. I don’t even have any from college. Aside from my brother, I have only one actual ongoing friendship in my life — besides Brent — that stretches back into the 1990s.

There are reasons I don’t have the same connections Brent does — besides my being broken, that is.

I gave up my senior year of high school in Colorado to finish in Australia as an exchange student. I made some friends there, and even a second family of sorts. But it was the ‘80s, and once I returned to America, it was hard to stay in close touch.

So most of those folks drifted away.

After college, I returned to Australia for a year and a half, and I even reconnected with some of those friendships. But eventually, I flew back to the U.S., and those friendships fell by the wayside once more.

Even then, I didn’t move back to Colorado, where I could have tried to resume some of those earlier friendships. Instead, I moved to Seattle.

In Seattle, I desperately wanted to become a writer. So I became a flight attendant — precisely because it gave me the flexibility and time I needed to write.

Unfortunately, “flight attendant” is not a job that fosters long-lasting work relationships — at least it didn’t for me. Airplane crews are constantly changing, so even when I made friends, I often only saw them a couple of times a year.

It was even harder for me because, instead of hanging out with my fellow crew members on layovers, I usually stayed in my hotel room to write, further isolating myself.

I could blame my lack of friendships solely on all of this. Then again, I made these choices.

Also, maybe I made these choices precisely because I didn’t feel a strong need for more and deeper friendships. So I didn’t prioritize them.

Which came first? The lonely chicken or the isolated egg?

I’m not sure why I am the way I am. Maybe, as Lady Gaga sings, “Baby, you were born this way.”

More likely, it was my dysfunctional childhood.

I think the emotional chaos of my family — and also the psychological and sometimes even physical abuse — taught me it was best to be aloof. Not to be too attached to people, because people are unreliable and sometimes scary.

Me, left, my mother, and my little brother.

I became quite good at surviving on my own.

Maybe too good.

As an adult, I enjoy my friends and love the ones who are especially close to me. But — and this is hard to admit — if I didn’t have them, I don’t think I would shrivel up and die.

But if this is a psychological scar from my past, what do I do with it? I don’t need that particular protection anymore, so do I try to soften my thick skin? Or do I accept I am who I am and leave it alone?

Brent has told me that if I were to die, he would probably give up nomading and move back to America to be close to his circle of friends; he’d need their support. He’s also said that if he were to die, I’d probably keep on nomading by myself.

It’s true: I can’t imagine trying to build a different life without him. And I sure as hell can’t imagine replacing him.

So I’m almost certain he’s right, that I would keep traveling.

Me on the left, Brent on the right.

As for support, well, I do have some friends. I would visit them and invite them to travel with me.

But also, I’ve usually been fine supporting myself.

Being alone doesn’t trouble me the way it would Brent — or maybe as much as it should.

Not long ago, Paul Theroux wrote about the dangers of a life of travel, and he included a chilling anecdote about meeting another expat, the writer Paul Bowles:

“Bowles retreated to Morocco, but when I was writing The Pillars of Hercules, I saw him, age 83, crouched on a mat in his chilly apartment in Tangiers, and I thought: I don’t want to end up like this.”

Brent read this essay and felt so strongly about it that he wrote a response.

But when I read it, I remember thinking, quite calmly, that I could see myself ending up the same way: traveling until age or illness forced me to stop, then remaining where I landed until I died, no one to be with me at the end.

I don’t love the idea of that particular end, but it doesn’t horrify me either. I recognize that life is choices — and we all have to live with ours.

If I did die alone, it would be because I chose it.

Thankfully, I’m pretty sure Brent isn’t planning on dumping me, and he’s both so healthy and comes from such a long-lived family, he’s pretty certain to outlive me.

Which means we’ll eventually settle down and build the kind of community he’s missing right now.

And that works too. Life is choices, and I know I’ll be okay either way.

But I still wonder: am I broken in some way?

If I am completely honest, I probably am. And if I keep being honest, I know once something is broken, it can’t ever be completely perfect again.

But I think I have done all right putting myself back together.

I think I’m a good friend. A good husband. A good man.

And that has to be good enough.

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Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For more about Michael, visit him at MichaelJensen.com.