You see the world, try new foods, meet new people, fall in love, visit amazing places,
learn other cultures – then it all comes to an end.
People come and go, always talking about were they go next, but what about coming home...?
We talk about the challenging parts while we’re away – sleeping in dorms, finding jobs, making
friends, traveling safe, learning social norms, meeting people you think you can trust – but these
are all parts you get through.
All of the lows are erased by the highs you experience.
The goodbyes are difficult but you know they are coming for everyone, especially when you
decide to take the final step of buying your plane ticket home ;(
All of these goodbyes are softened by the reunion with your family and friends.
Then you return home, have your reunions, spend your first couple weeks meeting with family
and friends, reminisce, tell stories, catch up etc etc. You’re Hollywood for the first couple weeks
and it’s all new and exciting. And then it all just…goes away.
Everyone gets used to you being home, you’re not the new shiny object anymore
and the questions start coming: So do you have a job yet? What’s your plan? Are you
dating anyone? How does your savings look...
But the sad part is once you’ve done your obligatory visits after being away for
sometime; you’re sitting in your room and realize nothing has changed.
You’re glad everyone is happy and healthy and yes, people have gotten new jobs,
engagements, kids, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc., but part of you is screaming don’t
you understand how much I have changed? And I don’t mean hair, weight, clothes
or anything else that has to do with physical appearance.
I mean what’s going on inside of our heads.
The way your dreams have changed, the way you perceive people differently, the habits
you’re happy you lost, the new things that are important to you. The things you learnt
about your country after you left it.
You want everyone to recognize this and you want to share and discuss it, but there’s no
way to describe the way your spirit evolves when you leave everything you know behind
and force yourself past your comfort-zone to take on life as it comes and not some written test.
You know you’re thinking differently because you experience it every second of every day
inside your head, but how do you communicate that to others?
You feel angry. You feel lost. You have moments where you feel like it wasn’t worth it because
nothing has changed but then you feel like it’s the only thing you’ve done that is important
because it changed everything.
What is the solution to this side of traveling?
It’s like learning a foreign language that no one around you speaks so there is
no way to communicate to them how you really feel.
This is why once you’ve traveled for the first time all you want to do is leave again.
They call it the travel bug, but really it’s the effort to return to a place where you are
surrounded by people who speak the same language as you.
Not English or German or French or Portuguese, but that language where others know
what it’s like to leave, change, grow, experience, learn, then go home again and feel more
lost in your hometown then you did in the most foreign place you visited.
This is the hardest part about traveling, and it’s the very reason why we all run away again.