There are three questions that every backpacker has probably answered more times then they’ve said sah wah dee khaa . Whats your name? Where are you from? How long are you travelling for? In my experience there are many people who travel based on the timeline of “until I run out of money” but there is always an underlying reason of why or what you left behind. Usually a job, studies, or a lover. However in my case it was the trifecta. A job I wasn’t feeling was challenging me, university courses that I was only taking purely to please my mom, and a lover who bless his heart couldn’t stop a free spirit.
The year 2016 was a hard one and it started with a lot of hospital visits. Not for me but for my Papa who was in and out of the hospital consistently for a few months before passing away in the spring. And for the father of my boyfriend who was deadly ill and struggling to hold onto his life while awaiting a liver transplant that eventually saved his life. All of this was emotionally tolling. These were my first adult experiences with illness and death- gut wrenching, stomach aching, heart heavy feelings that I didn’t know existed till then.
I remember the afternoon Luca’s dad found out he was getting a new liver. I was standing in the kitchen at my Mama and Papa’s house when I got the call. Without any hello or introduction Luca said “they found a liver”. This was the news that we had been waiting on for weeks. I was shocked. My heart beating while chaos and excitement all set in simultaneously. I told my family and rushed out of the house. I headed straight to Vancouver General Hospital where he was laying in the Intensive Care Unit. Yellow in the face and barely speaking. It broke my heart. We stood in the family sized hospital room as doctors, nurses, and anesthesiologists came in and out of the room checking vital signs and preparing him for the transplant. It hurt. Watching him. I loved Andrea like my father and I hurt for Luca because I couldn’t imagine if it were my dad. In those situations you stand there saying “see you soon” “love you” and anything else that could potentially soothe them, but really I was saying that stuff to soothe me. I stood there feeling slightly out of place in the "family only" ICU room as Gianna collected his wedding ring in a little hospital urine cup, and we took turns giving hugs and kisses. Then just like that we left and watched him get wheeled away. I held Luca.
He went in for surgery late in the evening, so we cuddled up in the back corner of the waiting room, and waited. There were a few other families and friends of other patients but the room was overthrown with sterile quietness amongst brief whispers of eager anticipation. Unbeknownst to me there seemed to be an unspoken rule in this waiting room, and perhaps this is an unspoken rule in all waiting rooms, but nobody talks about the condition of their loved ones . This baffled me because we are all such naturally curious beings so I think it’s odd that this was the case. Nonetheless we sat there. Hours passed. No word. But every foot step that passed through that plain bleak hallway sent shivers down my spine. Is he okay? Is the surgery over? It’s too soon to be over. Did something go wrong? Questions haunted my mind as we sat there with no answers. Eventually one of his doctors came in and sat down across from us. To immense relief, and I mean the kind of relief where you feel a brick being pulled off your shoulders,she said the words we’d been waiting to hear all night “the surgery went well”.
Those four words meant more to me that night then anything I could’ve ever imagined. Luca’s entire family meant the world to me and to this day they all still carry a special place in my heart. In some ways Luca’s dad’s illness brought us closer together, our relationship got deeper. Watching him with his dad made me think of the way he would care for our children, I saw a future with him more then than I did ever before. But our relationship still struggled. I saw him maybe once or twice a week and that put a strain on us. I kept quiet about it with my family and friends because I myself was dealing with such internal conflict I didn't want any external opinions and influences. I knew that if I let him go that would be it. I could have easily seen myself settling with Luca and having a good life. I could imagine us getting married and having children and raising them in the city and all would be good. But it wasn’t what I wanted. I wasn’t ready to commit my life to that. I was still trying to figure out who I was and I couldn’t do that with someone else.
The decision became clear after backpacking through Europe. I remember sitting on top of a mountain in Bern Switzerland completely in my element surrounded by nomadic wanderers and sipping on a glass of wine. It was in this moment that I realized how much I needed to travel. How important it was for me to travel. When I met up with Luca in Italy we spent two fabulous weeks together but the entire time in my heart I knew it wasn’t right. I kept trying to convince myself how great our life could be together, his family was so incredibly hospitable, but I didn’t fit in.
I am not a women to be domesticated, to settle, to be quiet, to play a role in a western white picket fence society. I've discovered myself as a woman who is fearless, driven, restless, eager, unwilling to settle, and selfish. Selfish because it was my time to chase dreams and internally investigate who the heck I was.
So in the weeks following my return to Canada I had made up my mind, I needed to travel and it wasn’t fair to be with Luca. Not fair to me, and not fair to him. I needed to be selfish and that meant breaking something that had been built with such love and intention. Ultimately I could imagine myself travelling and exploring and being alone but I didn’t anticipate the heartbreak. I didn’t anticipate the moment of the actual breaking. There is a reason it’s called heartbreak, no matter who is doing the breaking it still hurts. I was losing my best friend. I was letting go of something that was so undeniably comfortable to leap into such unknown territory. And to this day as I write this halfway around the world, I sit in the unknown. Fuck the 5 year plan, 1 month plan, tomorrow’s plan, and instead embrace this. This moment.