A Californian friend sends me a link to a travel blog. An English traveler who has crossed Africa from to side to side copies a text that is not hers, but it's speaking of herself. The text is an article written a couple of years ago, originally from Kellie Donnelly, who is another girl from Indiana who has also traveled a lot around the world. There are many travel blogs, photo-reports, journey notebooks. These are only two of them. The article speaks about the trip back, the bittersweet, irremediable feeling that one feels when coming back to move around known territory, after the intensity of the real journey. It may apparently seem a simple reflection, but far from it. I read it and it strikes a chord with my own recent experiences. Someone should warn us regarding certain travel details before packing up and getting out into the world. "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". Without a doubt, this is the hardest part of traveling. And hardly anyone talks about it. Just read it.
-------------
The Hardest Part of Traveling that No One Talks About
By Kellie Donnelly.
You see the world, try new things, meet new people, fall in love, visit amazing places, learn about other cultures – then it’s all over. People always talk about leaving, but what about coming home?
We talk about the hard parts while we’re away – finding jobs, making real friends, staying safe, learning social norms, misreading people you think you can trust – but these are all parts you get through. All of these lows are erased by the complete highs you experience. The goodbyes are difficult but you know they are coming, especially when you take the final step of purchasing your plane ticket home. All of these sad goodbyes are bolstered by the reunion with your family and friends you have pictured in your head since leaving in the first place.
Then you return home, have your reunions, spend your first two weeks meeting with family and friends, catch up, tell stories, reminisce, etc. You’re Hollywood for the first few weeks back 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 401k look for retirement? (Ok, a little dramatic on my part.)
But the sad part is once you’ve done your obligatory visits for being away for a year; you’re sitting in your childhood bedroom and realize nothing has changed. You’re glad everyone is happy and healthy and yes, people have gotten new jobs, boyfriends, engagements, etc., but part of you is screaming don’t you understand how much I have changed? And I don’t mean hair, weight, dress or anything else that has to do with appearance. I mean what’s going on inside of your head. 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. 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 to use your brain in a real capacity, not on a written test in school. 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 Spanish or Mandarin 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 than 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.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario