When we travel we collect.
We gather memories, write our own stories … become rich in experiences.
When we travel alone we carry all of these accumulations ourselves. The overall joy of exploring is intensified - the good with the bad, yet it can be extremely isolating.
We meet people, we leave people.
We pack our bags, we unpack our bags.
We see the most beautiful sights, laugh at the most ridiculous situations, and share intimate moments just us chasing endless sunsets.
I always thought I would be content with these collections being mine and mine only …
‘I don’t have to tell the world!’
I’d repeat this again and again almost like a mantra to friends and family that would suggest I start sharing on a public platform and for a long time I really felt it unnecessary that anyone else be involved in my travels.
MY travels.
MINE!
First of all, I assumed no one would care about what I had to say or want to listen. Secondly, my worst nightmare is to be associated with ego or looking for validation and so, holding onto these reasons I would resist their suggestions.
This way of thinking was working fine until I noticed whenever I came back from a trip, I could feel myself closing off or shutting down during conversations with others. Friends, family members and strangers alike. My whole being was OVERFLOWING with things to say, feelings to share, thoughts to scream and opinions to shout. I had experiences and memories bubbling up inside of me and knowledge I’d built up over time but it was starting to suffocate me and it was getting unmanageably loud inside my head. The only response I had to questions about where I had been or what I had been doing was to keep my mouth shut, keep it all inside, because I knew if I started talking I simply wouldn’t stop. What am I so scared of? All of these words swirling around inside me, writing their own memoirs would just start to tumble out of my mouth at great speed and really, does anyone want to hear all of that?! Does anyone actually give a shit about me living in a village in Kerala for a month installing solar panels or meeting the Dalai Lama in the Himalayas?! Other than my mum I didn’t think anyone would care to know.
The problem was, I was getting frustrated. Annoyed and impatient that people didn’t already know what I’d been through, weren’t ‘seeing’ me or hearing me. I was feeling more and more invisible but I was creating this invisibility myself … How could they possibly know?! I wasn’t opening up to anyone or anything other than with a pen on a piece of paper.
I have always kept a diary. There are many of them sitting collecting dust in a cupboard at my Grans house back in Scotland right now. Throughout the last few years of my life while I’ve been living out of a bag and sleeping on friends couches I have been giving away most clothes I own, in order to make more precious space for carrying these (heavy) journals filled with bus and train tickets, scribbled notes from people I’d met along the way or postcards of places I’d passed through. When I actually started to consider creating a platform to share some of this stuff it just gave me a big old headache. How could I possibly collect all of my ramblings and put them into some sort of coherent order? It felt too big.
Yet we all know timing is everything and for me, finally at 30 years old, it’s time to share. Not because of ego, not because of likes or followers, just because I have to. I’m having a strong physical reaction to carrying all of this alone for so long. To be honest I’m scared what will happen to these memories if I don’t tell them to someone.
Do they just evaporate out of your mind into the universe?
Slowly fall away into the depths of your soul only to be forgotten with the passing of time, leaving you doubting if any of it ever happened at all?
Sometimes it’s enough to just tell a close friend all of your stories … like the night in Mumbai when your train was 8 hours late to show up so you slept in the train station next to a family who lived there, then bought them all breakfast the next morning … or that time you got lost in Florence at 1am and decided to join in a street party happening on the Arno river until the sun came up … or the conversation you had six years ago with an 8-year-old buddhist monk in Vietnam that changed your life forever.
Sometimes it's enough just to tell a close friend.
Sometimes you yearn for others to know, to share in your experience.
This is about honouring the things I’ve been through. Plenty of travel, yes … but also battles with mental health, multiple previous lives as a gymnast/dancer/english teacher/fashion designer?! (still amazed at that one) the break up of my family, walking away from a man I loved after 7 years, discovering new love and ultimately a strong awakening and moment of realisation a few years ago that I needed to fall back in love with my life in order to keep on going.
I need to write about life.
I need to write about love.
Otherwise my soul won’t survive. … so yes, it's time to share with whomever would like to listen.
I'm not expecting the earth to shake with this release or a stampede of people rushing to comment ... I'm simply putting it out there, offloading from my mind into the universe. It no longer belongs to me. I am all too aware that I am by no means the only person ever to have gone through some of these things or to have ever had these perspectives. Even so, perhaps my words will touch some of you, make you smile, laugh, cry, bang your head against a wall, whatever.
Like I said this is for anyone who would like to listen.
We are all one consciousness.
Nothing is lost because nothing is owned.
With love, a bit of trepidation and an open, full heart.
Nic
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