I've been to a lot of places. All over the world. I've ridden in the back of trucks under the stars in South Africa, Jamaica, and probably my home state of Minnesota. I have stayed at tiny hotels on the China Sea and watched a baby playing in the sand in the middle of nowhere at ten pm... happy as can be.
I have met strangers on solo walks in parks in Budapest and at the lake in Minnesota- when I needed to get out and find space for my many racing thoughts. I have cried on the shoulders of strangers and learned more about people in a week than i've learned about my own friends after years of knowing them. I have found commonality with a girl from Austria on a late night in Antigua, Guatemala. I have told a girl from Norway about lost love and opened my heart up and revealed myself more openly than I ever have with my own family. I have tried to be open to love with a stranger and learned to be softer because of it. To say traveling has changed me would never begin to describe this journey that I have been on since I left America for the first time in January of 2013.
Traveling has made me. It has molded me, broken me, opened my eyes, expanded my reality and my world, made me feel small, made me realize how fortunate I am, and it has made me feel completely insignificant and alone. It has taught me a lot about living despite fear, and it has forced me to take steps forward even when my anxiety has told me to run and hide. Even when my anxiety has left me feeling like I would pass out on the airport floor and throwing up in the Dallas airport bathroom. Traveling has taught me to live. It has exposed me to courage and has forced me to choose it.
Most people don't understand the need to leave home. They don't understand the need to keep exploring and seeing what the world can teach us. Most people think i'm eternally on vacation and don't understand how difficult, isolating, and lonely traveling can be. Everyone is "jealous" of my travels, but they don't realize the sacrifices I am constantly making to chase after that voice in my head telling me there is more to see, learn, and experience in life. I have now traveled to 27 countries. I have a goal of making it to 30 different countries before my 30th birthday. I don't think a single one of those places in my passport has held my existence without me panicking about something. Whether it was fear for safety, confusion, a lack of money, missing someone I had lost, loneliness or sadness that had been long buried... Every place i've been to has both taken a part of me and given something back. I've gained so much more than I could ever give to any of these places.
I used to feel like I was desperately searching for something. My older sister once said "well, you're clearly looking for something. You can't do that, this is it. You just need to calm down and stay in one place." But I refused to believe her, my spirit hadn't found peace. So, I have been looking for the meaning in it all- looking to feel fulfilled, to feel at peace, to stop feeling so sad or hopeless... To find that spark in life that I have always believed exists.
What I realized is this: the ups and downs are literally life. The only thing I really need is to learn to sit in those moments and simply live them. To learn to love them, for they are the human experience. This great thing that i've been searching for all of this time has literally been me. I have been looking for myself. How funny it has been to realize that what I was traveling all over the world to find has been with me all along. But also, I know I never would have found myself if I didn't leave. If I didn't listen to the voice that told me to go. Because I listened to that voice, I have gained more than I will ever be able to put into words.
Goodbyes don't have to be scary or sad. You can love people while you have them, because life has a way of keeping that love in a capsule. For most of my life, I have been so afraid of change. I always saw it as a bad thing. In reality, change is freedom, it is opportunity. Strangers are a chance to fall in love again and add even more beauty to our lives. You never know who is going to become a crucial part of your story. Age difference doesn't matter. Time doesn't matter. All that matters is living in the moment. Loving and forgiving. Holding on to things we shouldn't keeps life from giving us more gifts. You can't be open to receive goodness when your hands are full of baggage.
You learn to love quickly, but you also learn what could be the most pure form of love. When you're on the road, you get to know each other completely as yourselves and you choose to spend time with that person knowing who they are. Love at home is often about impressing and proving and hiding our flaws until it's safe to unleash them. When you're traveling, the very fact that we are alive is what brings us together. Travelers don't question whether or not you are what you appear, because we know that facades are a waste of time when you're on the road. We know that the best way to learn from a new place is to be completely open to what it has to offer.