#hometomyself

I never thought I’d be typing this. And I do so while streaming tears down my eyeballs.

It took me 2 years worth of solo-traveling the entire world to find something I had inside myself the entire time. Having always dreamt of going on a ‘trip around the world’ and discovering every corner on Earth, I’ve been venturing on off-the-beaten-path trips. All I wanted to do was travel to all edges of a map.

Searching outside, I traveled to more than 15 countries and 5 different continents, to finally find what I did not know I was in search for. It took pulling out each and every root from the plots of land I was grounded to, to understand how important it is to be able let go. I now know what it is to feel rootless. To break free. To feel like you no longer belong to any place, but instead, to have your identity scattered all over the world.

It took absolute dettachement from everything/everyone and a life of owning absolutely nothing to realize how very little I needed in order to be happy. Just like when we’re thirsty we reach out for our water bottle, so do we instinctly when we are in need for love. We seek love from our families, support from our friends, we find safety inside of our homes, we hide our heads under our pillows and, somehow, we feel protected. Well, having lacked of all of the above, I now know what it is to find love from the most unexpected wells: from stranger volunteers whom I served with building houses for the descendants of the African-American slaves in Costa Rica, from the Colombian children of the never ending civil guerrilla war I taught English to, from the 1 scoop of rice + slice of a plantain I would be fed in Nicaragua, from the sound of Rowling monkeys that’d wake me up in the middle of the Puerto Rican jungle, or from the fine-grained sand that gets through the tiniest of all cracks when rolling down the golden dunes of the Glamis desert. May my cup always be filled up with all these different sorts of love.

No, I don’t have a dotted-elliptical-colorful & fancy world map that tracks all the places and destinations I’ve been to for a wall paper - mine would look like a bunch of 3-year-old baby scratches painting - my journey’s been fucking messy. But I’ll tell you something. Depth over distance. Please don’t tell me how many countries you’ve visited or how many miles you’ve traveled. Tell me about the times when you’ve hugged a stranger in need, tell me about how warm his/her heart felt. Tell me about how soft their skin was, or how cold their hands were when you grabbed on to them to make them feel supported. Tell me about the tears you’ve seen roll down strangers’ eyeballs, and the color of the tissue you used to wipe them off. It truly wasn’t distance that mattered to me, but how many times my heart would fill up with love and yet again peal another layer.

After a long solo-trip around the world and countless adventures, I now know what it is to be frightened at night when you’re sleeping all alone in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but poverty, somewhere in the so called ‘3rd world’. Did you know the 3rd world is also on our same Planet, and right next door? I also know what it feels to fear for your life. I’ve looked at the final ‘should-have regrets’ on the eyes - I now love more fiercely and hug truly, any day could be our last.

I now know what it is to shiver and crumble thinking about the solutide of an open road, and how tiny one can feel when staring at the White Sand Dunes of the desert in New Mexico. I know what it feels to walk alone through the ginormous Canadian maple tree woods. I know how crazy it sounds to talk to the trees and to thank them for being there, standing by you. I know what it is to invent stories about the silence accompanied by darkness and thunder. But I also know what it is to wake up in the morning and to feel your courage. As if you could hold it with both your hands and squeeze it, hug it, and tell it ‘I’m so fucking proud of you’. And oh boy - what a wonderful feeling that is.

I have learnt to find beauty even when in survival mode. I have learnt that us humans are like tool boxes, and that the tool-kit we’re all seeking has always been within. I have learnt that one can’t truly find itself unless it loses itself first. I have learnt that one footstep after the other is the only way forward and that one’s North can be redefined at every new awaking. And that staying stagnant is deadly.

I also know what it is to feel alone even when surrounded by hundreds of people. I now know that we shall always allow some space for that emptiness that gets through the cracks and breaks through the rocks called loneliness. Dear solitude. I see you. I feel you. I’m no longer afraid of you. I won’t ever again go running to hide under my bed at your arrival. You have space in my life, I enjoy your company. It is with you that I’ve found the answers I did not know I was seeking.

I now return to come home to myself. I return because traveling to a new country became to me like crossing the street to go see an old friend down the block from my house. Turns out I had made everyone’s out of the comfort zone into my most comfortable zone. Towards the end of my travels and on a 32 hour long journey from Vancouver to Indonesia I even showered at an airport lounge. I find that hilarious and at the same time, ballzy as fuck.

Some days I’d wake up in the morning and have a hard time remembering what country I was in. And then, I remember waking up one day and all of a sudden realizing that I didn’t need to put myself out there any more. That being vulnerable was crucial but nesting was so too. And I was ready to return because I had already arrived, at the center of the maze.

So, I now return from a life-long journey that I will never forget. It’s engraved in my identity, deep down in my soul. Call me genetically modified but it now belongs to my DNA, it’s in my fingerprints. Don’t you dare blame me for ‘no longer being the same person as I used to be’. Of course I am fucking not. And if you’re still the same person you were 5 years ago then you have a serious problem. I really hope that I’m not the same person within 5 years from now, but instead, to have outgrown and migrated to very many new shells, and to have bloomed into very many different flowers in many more springs to come. And I really hope that you do too, because if not, we will for sure be growing apart.