If you have ever done it, you will
know. Moving abroad has two the most difficult stages – the beginning and the
end. At the beginning everything that is new, which means EVERYTHING around you,
is bombarding you with the speed of light. You are constantly absorbing,
absorbing and absorbing until your mind just cannot keep up and feels
overwhelmed, with places, people, language, every little detail because nothing
is familiar. You are still somehow excited to be in a new place, but you feel also
lost and tired. That part is difficult, but it’s not that bad. You will survive
that, just get patient and strong. There’s quite a lot of fun in it. Then you
will be just proud of how much you have learnt and how perfectly you have accommodated
to a completely new environment.
What
is REALLY difficult and moreover REALLY painful is the end. I guess I should
have already found a solution to suffer less, but I have not.
My
family and some friends calls me globetrotter, but I don’t consider myself a
great traveler, compared to some people I know and many, many people I don’t
know. But still I think I have changed places enough times to be called a
traveler, just without adjectives. It all really started when I was 15 and had
to leave the city where I was born and had spent my whole lifetime in for a
little town where the family of my mum is from. I had to leave behind almost
everything I knew, almost all of my world, all the young and fragile life of
mine. It felt like losing ground under my feet and falling down into darkness,
I’m not exaggerating. When we left, I was crying, no, blubbering in the car for
two hours and stopped only because I got headache and felt sick. And when we
got to a new place I was supposed to live in, I couldn’t get over it for about
two months until I started a high school there and realized that shit just got
real and we’re not coming back. I assume that after such a traumatic experience
I should have started to hate travelling and changing places for the rest of my
life in order to avoid such a pain again. But I haven’t. It became opposite.
That turning point of my life seems to have started a new phase of my life. It
maybe even indeed have started my real life. It has marked the way I
unconsciously started to live afterwards. After that change I never spent in
any place more than a few years and I don’t think I will in the nearest future.
3 + 5 + 1,5 years in different cities of Poland, 5 + 6 + 2 + 1 months in different
places in Finland and 3 + 2 months in England. And now I’m about to leave Mexico
after spending here 7 months. So how come that after such a leave trauma I made
my life a constant travel? I guess because I saw and unconsciously learnt what
happened after the pain went away. I accepted. I got used to. I made friends. I
made better friends that I had in my life before. I experienced many good
things and I saw life from a new perspective. It turned out it was all for
good.
I
know it’s always for good, I know that everything has its beginning and its end
and, finally, I know that when I decide to travel it indicates saying goodbye
and saying goodbye indicates pain. It’s the whole package, you take it all or
forget it. All or nothing. So I take all because being stuck in one place for
me means exactly nothing, means stagnation. I know that I choose it, I know
it’s unavoidable, I know something new will start, but so what if still after
so many times it hurts the same! Like I hadn’t learnt anything. Or better, my
mind has, but my heart has not.
And
the farewell I am about to experience seems to be the toughest. Why? The extent
of the pain of saying goodbye depends on many factors. In fact, they could be
summarize in four points (but if you think any other could be added, feel free
to tell me): 1) how much time you spent there, 2) how far you are going, 3)
what and who is waiting for you back home or wherever you’re going, and the
most important 4) how much of your heart you left there. In my case right now it
is: 1) 7 months, 2) 10 000
km, 3) not too much, 4) way too much. If I was to define
the point 4 in
percentage, it certainly wouldn’t be 100%, because there are other people and
places that are dear to me, but what matters is that the part of my heart that Mexico occupies
was the part that was beating strongly for the last 7 months while the other
parts were quite silent. So leaving is just a heartbreak. And get prepared, because
the heartbreak is still not the worst part. The worst part is the emptiness that
comes after. One day, one week, maybe two weeks after. If you have a lot of
tasks and a lot friends around you, you’re lucky, you will suffer less. But
still you will because nothing and nobody around you will have any memory in
common with you from the life that you just left behind and that was so dear to
you. But if you’re going to be stuck in an empty house like I am going to be
soon, better start making right now a plan on how to fill your life again in
order not to get depressed. Yes, what you experience after coming back can be
nearly depression or in some cases literally depression. I’m not kidding.
It’s
like losing all the pieces that constructed your whole world for the time you
spent there. They just disappear one after another, fly away and you can only
helplessly see them leave and cannot stop them. The show is over, all the
actors and all the elements of the stage design are being taken one by one
until they turn off the light and you remain on an empty stage alone having not
idea what to do next. But hey, isn’t the opposite metaphor the truth? You’re
the one who leaves the stage for something new while everything stays the same
stuck in one place, don’t you? Yes, but it feels how I described it. The magic
trick is to convert that feeling in a feeling that goes with the truth. I am
leaving for something new, something even better. The mind knows it, but heart
is not that obedient. In the end I think it just has to hurt. You won’t
overcome it. You just have to be patient, experience it as it is and get
through it. Fighting with it usually gives you just more pain. You fight,
fight, fight, think that you’re strong, but then there comes one weak moment
and it strikes all with even more power. Just live with it until it goes away,
it always does.
In
those stages of my life I think I should at last settle down in one place, just
to avoid this pain. But I know I cannot, because nothing is worse that
stagnation. It doesn’t really hurt you so much and that’s why it’s way much
dangerous because it kills you silently. You get safe and comfortable and
that’s a trap because life begins where the comfort zone ends.
About
two days ago I imagined that I could be still stuck in the same office, sitting
on the same chair, staring the same screen and coding the same invoices. It was
quite probable, I was quite close to stay there. But I made a step and changed
7 months in front of invoices for 7 months of teaching lovely Mexican children,
giving them attention and getting their love in return, experiencing wonderful
Mexican friendships, getting sunburnt by the Carribean sun, eating tortillas,
drinking tequila, climbing pyramids, swimming in cenotes, learning Spanish and
more, more, way much moooooooooore that is just unwritable because it’s pure
emotion that fills me inside. It made me laugh that I could have missed it all
just because of stupid comfort zone and some fear. Oh my God, I made the best
decision in my life. THE BEST ONE. I will cry as a fuck while leaving, but if
I’m capable of making such perfect decisions, I can make even better ones and
bring more life to my life again. Can’t I?
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