I am a flight risk.

I'm not being arrested and sent to prison, don't worry. I'm not attempting to run away from court or the police or impending incarceration. I simply have the need to be somewhere.

There are so many places that I want to be, so many great countries and cities all across the world. Places and trips that would give me a purpose.

Whether it's takin the train to Chicago or driving to New York. Hopping on a plane to England or to France or to Spain and getting lost in a foreign country.

I have the need to disappear into the world for a little while, to lose myself in streets in another land, to lose myself entirely, only to eventually find my way back home. I have the need to be someone else, if only for a minute. I am a flight risk.

But I also realize that I have responsibilities. I have a job, I have classes. These are the things that hold me back. So I relieve myself by taking small adventures into forests and corn fields, by disappearing for a few hours. I drive, I take myself on these seemingly endless roads that I never want to end.

I seek a purpose because I don't have one just yet.

I have no obligation to my family to be in a certain place at a certain time. My parents are divorced, living separate lives. My brother has a job, has his own friends, his own life. I have friends, but I force myself to ask the question: Would they miss me if I disappeared on an adventure? I have no significant other to spend time with. I have no obligation to anyone but myself, and sometimes myself wants to escape life for a little bit.

Yet I'm here, stuck in a small college town trying to make the best of it, eagerly seeking that freedom, waiting for the chance to leave my life for a week or a month or however long it takes to find something absolutely incredible. So I'm forced to make the best out of midnight trips to Meijer or the simple act of discovering a new street that I didn't know existed.

In some sense, that small discovery is great. I have a purpose for a small amount of time in my life. But the big cities, the foreign countries, the concept of a new place where no one knows my name -- these things call to me.

One day I will answer to this call and simply disappear into the wind for a little while. My obligation to myself will be complete and I will have no one to answer to. But until that day I'll need to make the best of my dreams. I'll dream of the day that I step foot onto an airplane for the first time, or the day that I stand on the edge of a cliff and listen to the wind. I'll dream of the people that I'll meet and the people that I will fall in and out of love with. I'll dream and I'll know that one day those dreams might be reality, if only because I need them to be.