The In-Between; A Journey Home

Traveling to a new place, especially when one is used to traveling, creates a diverse array of emotions. There is sadness when taking that initial step towards leaving - but not remorse or regret. There is excitement for going to a new place - perhaps not new to knowledge but new to routine - and the anticipation of change is usually a good one. However, there is also nerves when entering into something completely new. There are plenty of soon to be answered questions, but that leaves this period of simultaneously unknowing and seeking. I am a child on her last day of high school - prepped for freedom, yet attached to tradition.

I am in the in-between.

The takeoff is the easiest moment. I have time to prep, organize, rest, meditate, or be mindless. I can test the waters of my new place by taking in the surroundings of who else is on their way there. What languages do they speak? How does it sound to me? I can sleep and forget about leaving, coming or going.

I am in mourning, and I am excitedly en route. The time for mourning is brief and sharp, a pang in the heart during the ascent.  What sadness it is to go. What torture endings are, on loop, unclear where it begins again or truly completes its cycle. Every time it is as if I am saying goodbye for infinity. This debt of emotion will keep up until a landing is nearly insight, until the chime of arrival makes itself known. Until a fellow passenger wants to distractedly become my friend. Until then I'm in-between. In between melancholia and thrilled anticipation.

I never stop living as if it is an adventure. This is the enthusiasm of a traveler. As much as goodbyes can make me cry, or day dream about all that was, they never hinder my spirit for adventure.

No single moment deters us from the path we travel down. No single moment can take away the thrilling nature of living. We don't choose the road less traveled by, we choose the wild, where there is no road. We trudge through crunching leaves, up steep rock faces, around glaciers, and through the jungle - each step making our own fortune. An obstacle is not an obstacle if one enjoys climbing it. Sadness is not melancholia if one can have gratitude for the lighter moments. 

The beauty of goodbyes, the in-between, and new beginnings, is in all of the emotion and reflection. I am excited, enthusiastic, thrilled, solemn, thoughtful, heartbroken, renewed, observant, enlightened, and in love with the journey. 

Here I am completing my first long-term travel abroad. I've been to Europe, all over Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. I did it in 16 months. I made hundreds of friends, stayed in hundreds of places, and I did most of it on my own. 

And still the in-between journey is a strange grieving thrilling sensation. It often occurs to me as the airplane taxis the runway, or as I am waiting for the line to subside during the plane boarding. I am leaving behind those moments in that land and time. The moments and emotions become my memory, they become my story, and for the time being, it belongs to only me. It's thrilling to have my precious little secret. It's daunting to want tirelessly to stand on a rooftop and shout to all the world what all these incredible moments have been like for me - to share my story in hopes of enlightening, empathizing, connecting my travel world with all of my other worlds.

Like a first love, I want to announce this infinite rollercoaster romance with the universe, and in that desire to share I fill myself with gratitude for the moments. With that gratitude, the in-between quickly becomes a soothing place, a warm hug that wraps up in me and holds tightly until love is pouring out of my every cell. Its a laugh at the struggles, a kiss to the joys, a smile at the nonsense, and a wink to the woes. Its loving the adventure, and the journey, where ever it may go. The in-between becomes my meditation, my path to the next adventure, my guide to the next enlightening struggle, and my ticket through the portal of time within my internal world. I am so grateful for each adventure, and for every in-between becoming such a gift to the spirit. Its precisely why I planned to take 6 weeks to travel home, and see friends I've met while traveling, rather than return in one fell swoop.

So here's to my heartwrenching mournful 'goodbye', my enthusiastically grateful 'so long', and my anxiously excited 'hello.'

Here's to the next adventure, and making it through the in-between.

I'm coming home.

"I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel." - Rosalia de Castro

The Answer, my Friend, is Blowing in the Wind

The world is always looking out for us. I find it hard to believe in circumstance when I have narrowly missed life-threatening natural disasters at least four times.

Had I not traveled to Nepal in November and December 2014, perhaps I would have been there in April 2015 when three record-setting earthquakes shattered the country’s resources and killed over 4,000 people. Had I chosen to climb Mount Kinabalu, as planned, rather than travel to Brunei and fly to the Philippines, then perhaps there would have been 17, instead of 16, trekkers killed on the top of the summit during the earthquake that struck at the beginning of June. If I hadn’t been robbed in the Philippines, maybe I would have continued to camp on beaches in the Philippines and Indonesia, and maybe something much more traumatizing would have happened to me. After that experience, and the beginning of the rainy season, I booked my flight out of the Philippines early, and maybe, just maybe that would have put me on the wrong boat that day in June when cyclones hit and 32 people drowned. After all, I was on the same sea, traveling not too far away. If I stayed in Indonesia I would be coping through the massive forest fires that are currently ravishing the nation - particularly in Kalamatan – where seasonal field burning has become the latest nightmare.

I seem to float along like a feather carried by the wind. Although I don’t know where I am going, the wind does. It takes me high above all of the coral reefs, over the volcanoes, through the fiords, and away I go. Carelessly free and floating on the back of this invisible force that seems to hold all harm at bay.