The
Hardest Part Of Traveling No One Talks About
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.)
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 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.