Every time you travel (and I mean truly travel, not only vacation) you leave a piece of you behind. At least that’s how it’s happened for me. You arrive somewhere being this whole person and leave being a little bit less yourself and a little bit more everyone around you. With time, you realize after living abroad there will always be something missing. When you are abroad you are missing things at home, when you go back home it doesn’t feel quite the same. Some of your closest friends and favorite places are thousands of miles away and even though you know you’ll see each other again, you have no idea when. You feel comfortable in many different places but also, you are never quite “complete” again.
For a while, I had a hard time being at peace with this feeling that my life was scattered across the globe, but here’s why living a “fragmented “ life is worth it and why I would do it again one hundred times over:
1. It Shapes Your View of the World
It’s weird at first, feeling like parts of you are missing, but you soon realize they have been replaced by parts of others — your experiences, your memories, every single interaction you had abroad shapes you. For a while I was juggling the different aspects of my life hoping they would eventually fall into place, until I finally realized they wouldn’t. The thought that I would be missing somewhere or someone for the rest of my life was a gut-wrenching feeling but I soon realized that I picked up as many pieces as I left behind. In a way, you become a mosaic of those who you’ve crossed paths with; you experience the world a little different when there are parts of you all around it. At the same time, there is something comforting in knowing that because of you, those people see the world a little bit different too.
2. You Learn to Make it Purposeful
If we’re being completely honest, as cool as it is to meet new people and have them change how you see things, it sucks having to leave eventually. So far in my life I’ve had the pleasure of living in four different cities and travelling to many more and let me tell you, leaving part of you behind doesn’t get any easier. It is strange building a life and relationships somewhere when you know you have a (usually very) limited amount of time to enjoy them; it is almost as if you walk into it already missing every second of what you haven’t experienced. Still, this has taught me to make my stays more purposeful. There is a beauty to knowing your time in a certain place is finite, because you are conscious about enjoying every single moment, whether that is missing out on a few hours of sleep to watch a sunrise or simply getting close to someone who you know you won’t see again for a long time. The way I see it you will miss being there (and who you are there) no matter what, so might as well do something worth missing.
3. You Learn to Make a Home Anywhere
The concept of home is a funny one. I have this idea of home as a state of perfect comfort and bliss. Some people think of it as a place, some think of it as a person. Having lived elsewhere, it’s different: your life become a strange paradox where everywhere is home, and at the same time, nowhere is. The place where I grew up, the place I called home for 18 years suddenly felt like it was missing something, new “home” ignored the first 18 years of my life and the people I felt I could come to were scattered across the globe. It took me a while to figure it out, but I learned that you make a home for yourself wherever you are; this is probably the greatest lesson I gathered from traveling. You make a home for yourself through memories, through recalling all the feelings you experienced, through the long-distance conversations you keep alive in spite of time differences. You carry home within you; you yourself create that comfortable, blissful state of mind because it’s not about the immediacy of being somewhere or with someone. You once where there with them and that stays with you and if you rescue that from all the unnecessary noise in life, you will be home.
For those of you who haven’t yet adventured into the nomad life I will go ahead and tell you to do it, but I need to warn you: traveling tears you apart, it will take pieces of you and even though it builds you back up, you can never know for sure what the end result will be.
Travel because it will change you, but be aware that you can’t go back.
