When you are traveling across the world, you try new things, meet people, visit several breath-taking places, and learn about different cultures then it’s all just over. Usually there is talk about leaving, why not about coming home?
We always talk about the difficult aspects when we’re away – searching for work, looking to make some real friends, learning new cultures, wrongly judging people – however, these are the things which you can go through. These low level experiences are forgotten and replaced by the high ones. It is very hard to say goodbye but you know they are inevitable, particularly when you book a flight for home. Such sad partings are renewed when you are reunited with your family and friends which you imagine while leaving in the first place.
You come back home, enjoy your reunions for a few days while catching up on stories and events, etc. You’re very popular the first few weeks but alas, it all goes away. They get used to you being around them, in your home, you lose all the popularity you had when you arrived. Then the routinely questions start: did you find a place to work at? What’re your plans? Are you seeing someone?
However, the depressing thing is once you’re done with all the obligatory visits after being away for so long; you’re in your childhood room then this thought hits you that nothing has changed. You’re pleased at the fact that all are happy, healthy, some have found new jobs, girlfriends or boyfriends, getting engaged, etc. then there’s a part of you which is eating you from the inside at “how much I have changed?” By change I don’t mean physically or appearance wise but by goes inside that mind of yours. The way you see things, your dreams and habits which you are happy about that you lost they are all changed and are now different than what and how they used to be. The new things are now of much more importance to you. You feel the need to discuss and share this feeling with everyone, you want them to recognize this but you don’t know how to describe how you feel when you let the past be past and force yourself to be in the present. You know that you’re feeling and thinking differently since you go through it every moment and day inside your mind, but how to reach out to others? How to communicate with them?
You’re angry, frustrated, feeling lost. There are times when you feel like it wasn’t worth all the effort due to the fact that nothing has changed, on the contrary you feel this is the only important thing you’ve done so far because it changed everything. Is there any safe haven from this aspect of traveling? The idea of trying to communicate this feeling to others is like a foreign language as they don’t understand how you actually feel and are going through.
Hence why you want to leave again after having your first experience traveling. It is known as the ‘travel bug’, however, it’s all about returning to a place where you can surround yourself with people you can interact or intermingle with. All the effort so that you know what it’s like to grow, experience, discover leave and return home again feeling more lost in your own hometown than you did in most foreign place you visited.