Post Travel Depression
I
have been blessed to have had some incredible travel experiences for someone so
young. Traveling alone has taught me more than any of my classes combined, not
just about the world, but about myself. There is nothing quite like setting off
on your own, with no idea where you are going or what you are gong to do there.
I have had incredible adventures, met amazing people from all over the world,
and experienced life in a way many people never even know is possible. Now, I
have added a new lesson to my collection of things learned on the road. It has
to do with returning home.
After
spending several weeks travelling in the middle east, I returned to school and,
in an tiny, isolated town, dealt with the depression that comes with being
stuck in one place. After my first solo trip, the road called to me like a long
lost friend, and facing the reality of the world after traveling has proved to
be one of the most difficult experiences I have had. I sat in my room day after
day, looking at photographs and journal entries from past trips, and dreaming
of new place to simultaneously lose and find myself once again. Day after day,
I wished I could return to one of the many places that have captured my heart
and shaped my identity and to the people who have opened my eyes to the beauty
of the world. There is so much to experience—to me there is nothing more
exhilarating than landing in a new place and having no idea where the hell I am
going or what I am doing. In all my years of school, I have not learned half as
much as during any one of my trips. Yet despite this, each time I am
forced to call a place "home" and embraces the sorry thing that is
the development of a daily routine, the depression that comes with the
transition is more difficult each time. Travel is an addiction. Once you taste
it, you have to have more. It sucks you in and sweeps you away...there is no escape.
Yet, in a way, this is why travel is so beautiful. Although it is little
consolation, the way it allows us to become travellers in routines and daily
lives is beautiful in itself. It is easy to become depressed once one is forced
to stay in one place and make a life there, but without this, travel loses
something.
There is no adventure without rest, and no true sense
of what home is without struggling to find it elsewhere. Once home becomes a
place within ones identity rather than a point on a map, but in a way that
point is the beauty of travel. With the hope that someday the idea of home may
become internal, maybe it is possible, someday, to see a routine and sedentary
life as travel also. Maybe someday settling down will not seem like a sacrifice,
but like the next adventure.
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