I don’t travel anymore.
I suspect that’s normal for most thirty-somethings who spent much of the prior decade seeing the world, but it is so unusual for me that I’m honestly having difficulty recognizing myself.
In June I flew to Atlanta and it was my first time on a plane since the end of 2014. 2014! Who am I?
I used to be the girl who decided on a whim to go to Italy with a friend after seeing “Under the Tuscan Sun” in college. The girl who had never traveled outside the U.S. and didn’t even had a passport. The one who decided to take a leap so big for her first international trip that she chose a place where she didn’t even speak the language. I was the girl who decided to look into the Birthright trip and actually made the choice to fly off to the Middle East on a two-week-trip with no one she knew.
There was a time when I was a girl who decided to apply to graduate school in a foreign country. Instead of sending applications to a few different universities, that girl only applied to the University of Glasgow. And when she got in, she picked up her entire life and moved halfway across the world to a country she’d never visited even though she did not know another soul who lived there.
This girl has traveled to Iceland and Ireland, Malta and Tennessee, England and Washington. She moved to Boston after a year in Scotland, which was another new city without any familiar faces.
Somewhere along the way, that girl turned into this girl. The girl who hasn’t been out of Arizona since June. Who hasn’t even been out of Tucson since November. The girl who no longer feels the passion of exploring a new place or meeting someone from a completely different culture and background.
And this girl can’t help but wonder what happened.
If you’ve ever met me before, you know that I can be really hard on myself. The fact that I don’t really travel anymore makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong…but I also realize the fear of what others think is part of the reason that I don’t do it much.
Of course practical things like money, work, and pet ownership make it more difficult to travel, but none of those things are impossible to overcome. What I’m having difficulty getting past, however, is my mind.
Even if you do not cower in a corner before your thirtieth birthday, something about that calendar milestone does change you. You start to get really in your head about what you should be doing and how you should act.
My thirty-year-old brain started telling me that I should try to settle down and stay in one place. I should get serious about finding a life partner and think about things like home ownership and retirement funds. These thoughts echoed louder than the desires that the real inner me whispered about wanting to travel more.
Before long, it seemed like those were the things I wanted in my life. That it was okay to sit at home by myself all the time because my real life would start soon—the life you’re supposed to have.
The problem with that, though, is that I was already living my real life. I was allowing myself to be adventurous and try new things. To spend time with the people who really understand me on a soul level—even if they live on the other side of the country or the world.
I don’t think I’m going to spontaneously buy a plane ticket to France or Brazil tomorrow, but I do think it is important to realize that I don’t have to give myself permission to want the things I want. It’s okay if I don’t have a conventional life.
The only thing that really matters is that I live a life that makes me really, really, ridiculously happy.
