My favourite part of traveling

It’s 8 in the morning and I am the only one at the beach. I brought grapes, bananas and lots of water, fully committed to spend the day here. Trying to feel like the main character in a movie, but the reality is that the wind is blowing sand in my eyes and my hair is sticking to my lips and the sand is sticking to my hands that are covered in sun lotion. I have to hold on to my hat and it’s just not really the movie moment I had imagined. But I am d e t e r m i n e d to enjoy it because that’s what you have to do when you’re abroad, on a sunny island and have a beach to yourself right? That’s what everyone tells you, what everyone works towards and the main small talk people you meet seem capable of: are you going anywhere this year? And as if the answer isn’t enough: are you going anywhere else after that?

For the best part of a decade my life was made up of travel. As a destination wedding photographer I got to see some of the most beautiful places in the world. I got to combine work and holidays and often jetted to more than one country a week. Often my body would be present in a place but my mind was still playing catchup and didn’t know where it was currently staying. It was beautiful and exciting as it was exhausting and overrated. But you are not allowed to complain about travel. You are not supposed to because it is a privilege to be able to travel, to get paid for it (I know it is) and it’s in some paragraph of our societal contract that travel is part of the good life, you have to aspire to do it as much as possible and when you do, you have to enjoy it, swoon about it and pretend to love every second. People will lie about their holidays before telling you the truth: that it's just not what they thought it would be, and that that's ok.

I love meeting new places, faces, foods, leave the beaten path and explore things I know nothing about. I love visiting my friends who live spread out all over the world. I love the feeling of being somewhere unknown, not speaking the language and feeling like a child making discoveries for the first time.
What I don’t love is the glamorisation of traveling. The way we make travel to be a personality trait. And too much of any good thing usually turns bad. Even travel. Forgive me if years of weekly flights have made me tired, but they have.

So I find myself on said sunny island for a friend’s birthday combined with some work as well. It is a sweet time. I love celebrating him. I meet a bunch of fascinating new people. I eat some delicious food. I fill up on Vitamin D and enjoy speaking Spanish again. I swim in the ocean. I have sand in my butt cheeks. I wander down cobblestone streets, chat to strangers, have afternoon naps (granted, I also do those at home) - and yet no part of me thinks 'I want to move here' - the sentiment I hear from so many people around me.

It’s the belief that being in the sunshine, living where you normally would just holiday, will make it all better. It will take the pain away.
Am I just really fucking lucky that the weather doesn’t affect my mood?
But there is something else too: the pain doesn’t come from the rain. The pain comes from the system we exist in. The work we have to do, the money we have to make, the lifestyle we have to sustain, the boxes we have to tick.
That pain doesn’t go away with a change of postcode. It will follow us everywhere. You still have to survive in the same system, even on a sunny island.

Mixed with the sweetness of it and the moments of joy, I also feel lost for the whole of my stay. Like I am an island on an island. A plastic bag in the wind. Excuse the Katy Perry metaphor.
If you’ve read my very first life letter or generally been here long enough, you know my quest to find belonging, wearing the silly, insufficient label of ‘third culture human’. An immigrant twice over, with no real home and yet more than one.

When I found the place that made me feel the closest to something like home, leaving it suddenly became unbearable.

On my first day back in London, it pours with heavy rain - I open the windows and listen to it for two hours and fell asleep. It's my favourite music and I am so happy to be welcomed back home by rain.
Being away makes me realise how much I truly love my life. I know it before leaving of course, I even cry at the airport because I really just want to stay home - but more than that it highlights that I am on the right track.
Nothing is perfect here: over the last 12 months I have wrestled with so much doubt over what I am doing, how I am doing it and where - once again, I put everything on the line and ask all the questions.

One flight to take it all away. It is so crystal clear. In spite of the many uncertainties - I am doing what I have to do, with the people I am meant to be with, in the right place for this time of my life. I found my home in the work I do. I know what my mission is and I follow it with purpose. I am intentional about my relationships, I speak the truth and I am not hiding in the shadows. I am unashamed, unafraid and deliberate. I have a strong community of people who love me so well and who teach me every day. I watch myself grow constantly, with joy and sometimes pain, I am so proud of this life I am building and the why.
Whatever doubts I had up until two weeks ago - being away from what I know to be my place, really highlights that my path is the right one for me.

I know how special it is to be able to travel, even though I almost never do it anymore. I had a fun time doing it excessively in my twenties and I will always be grateful for a job that led me to everywhere.

But: seasons. Seasons for everything.

On January 7th, 2017 I woke up in Cape Town, sitting by the pool of a stunning Airbnb and felt something strange. I wrote these words:

“I have been feeling something old inside of me for days. A forgotten sensation, like something I remember from a dream, yet very new to me. I needed some time to understand what it is, because it felt familiar but out of my reach, something I haven’t felt in so long.
It is a soft and small bloom inside of me, unfolding in vibrant colours, it smells so sweet and it stings with urgency. It’s like a muffled call from underwater. It makes me smile and makes me long to pack my bags right away. It’s the opposite of what I always wanted, the opposite of leaving.
I am homesick. For the first time in many many years, maybe ever. I want to go home.”

I wonder, if our desire to travel is as much the desire to escape the lives we don’t like as it is trying to find home and come home.
Of course, there might be many other truths in between these two but today I don’t care for them.

Today, I simply sit in what is true for me now: that my favourite part of traveling is coming home.