Hello there!

It’s been nearly six months since I boarded the plane that would eventually take me to Nepal. Six months, and it feels like I’ve squeezed a year into that time. So much has happened – I’ve done a lot, seen a lot, been through a lot, so here’s a little six-month reflection as I prepare to spend my last six weeks in Vietnam.

I have never felt so isolated before. This kind of loneliness is painful. And embarrassing? Like, when the girl handing out boat tickets asked “how many?” and I said “one,” and she went, “ah,” and patted my arm. #LOL. Finding community while traveling alone is tough. Harder than I thought it’d be. I could probably be a little more proactive in finding social events to get involved in, but hello, #introvert! I’m not the kind of person to approach a stranger and strike up a conversation, so why would I suddenly become that way in SE Asia? I mean, I could become that person, but I don’t really want to. Social interaction in general is exhausting. But social interaction that is just having the same conversation over and over again in the hopes you find someone you genuinely connect with? I’m just over here expending my energy trying not to get hit by a moped, okay? I don’t have a lot left over for brief interactions with people I probably will never talk to again. So does my isolation exist in part due to my choices and who I fundamentally am as a person? Yep. Doesn’t make it any less hard.

I have never felt so comfortable in my own presence before, and that feels powerful. Despite the challenges it’s brought, I have loved this journey of becoming my own best friend. While at times that aloneness has felt enormous and terrible (see above paragraph), it’s also been utterly freeing. I genuinely enjoy being alone, more than I ever have. But being alone, and loneliness, are two very different things.

I envisioned everything about this trip going completely differently. In my foolish naivety, I’d hoped it was going to look like the Instagram reels I’d seen while doomscrolling on my phone. It’s okay, you can #LOL because I am also #LOLing. I have a tendency to romanticize things, build them up in my head. What can I say? I’m a writer – my imagination goes wild sometimes. But that can mean the reality of a situation is oftentimes a letdown. Not that this trip has been a letdown – it’s been an incredible experience, and I’ve even had some fun along the way! But underneath the surface, it’s felt like this trip has been a massive, unending test to my limits, and too many times, I’ve been left wondering if I’d made the right decision by uprooting my life as I did. There have been moments where, for a second or an hour, I regretted that decision. Moments where I thought I’d break. And moments where I felt stuck and didn’t know how to move forward. I am relearning a lot of what I thought I knew – about myself, the world, how life is supposed to look and my involvement in it – and those kind of growing pains are poignant and tough. Those kinds of growing pains require you to shed your skin like a snake and step out of the comfort you’ve been encased in and cross the threshold to something different, bigger. And the more I fought against that shedding, the worse it’s hurt. Pain can mean a lot of things, but I think we have a tendency to label it negatively every time, even though in many situations, that pain is making way for something better. Clearing out all the unnecessary baggage to help us move closer to who we’re supposed to be.

This trip has taught me more than ever what it means to be present. To find happiness in yourself. To be truly grateful for your life and what you have. To trust in the universe or God or whatever you believe in that things will be okay. It’s given me the chance to dig deep within myself and examine parts I never had before, because I never had to. It’s been life-changing and grounding. And while it hasn’t been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, navigating a divorce takes the cake on that, it has been the most rewarding.

The best part? It’s slowly, quietly, given me the layers of self-confidence I’ve desperately needed for a long time. Years ago, there were people in my life who doubted my ability to go hiking alone because I’d never done it before. Well, we all gotta start somewhere, right? Now look: I’m navigating countries by myself. Becoming self-assured is quite possibly the most empowering feeling. And with every brick of self-assuredness I stack, I’m armored a little more with the kind of resilience this kind of confidence leads to. Resilience I’ve always admired but lacked – until now.

I’ve cried a lot on this trip. Just the other day, I tried to ride my bike the 5 kilometers to old town, couldn’t figure out where the supposed backroad was (navigation will never be my strong point, people), got frustrated, and started crying in the middle of the road. Ha.

In general, my emotional state has felt extreme and all over the place, because my environment is extreme and all over the place. In a span of a few hours, I can go from giddiness to bawling in the shower. Thankfully, the more time that goes on, the less of an arc these swings have, but they still exist, and all I can do is feel those emotions and then have a good chuckle after.

I was going to write a blog about my experience so far in Vietnam, and what I wrote out sounded so… fake. I mean, yes, overall I’ve had a great time in Vietnam so far. I’ve had fun here, more so than in Nepal. Being in a tropical climate (LOVE) and with access to modern-enough amenities that I am comfortable allows for an experience that isn’t so steeped in hard lessons. One of my favorite experiences was when I took a day cruise to Ha Long and Lan Ha Bays. Or when I stayed at an Airbnb in Trang An, and my window looked out to towering limestone cliffs and I felt like I was in paradise. Or the way I was tended to and cared for from the family who owns the cute homestay I’ve been at for the past week. But underneath the smiling photos and pretty scenery is a woman who’s struggling to figure out what this all means when she thought the reason would make itself more obvious. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but quitting my life, so to speak, and landing on the other side of the world feels big. So I figured the reason behind it would be big.

But.

I’ve come to realize that his trip doesn’t have to have any big meanings or takeaways. If all it ends up being was a cool thing I did for six or seven months then came home and went back to “real life,” there is nothing wrong with that. At the very least, I have learned some incredibly valuable things about myself and this world, and those lessons will stick with me forever. That in itself is pretty big, isn’t it?

So.

I am coming home for a break in July. I never expected to come home this early. But I’ve also never been away from home for this long before. I’m more homesick than ever, I miss Magnus so very much, and decision fatigue is a THING. I’m getting pretty tired. Tired of moving from place to place and all that comes with it– from packing and unpacking to figuring out where to stay and where to eat and what to do. Navigating various cultural barriers and language barriers. I’d like to be on auto-pilot for just a little while, please! To complain about all this sounds disgustingly privileged, and what a cool problem to be up against! But it’s the reality of traveling, and I’m wondering when I’ll hit my limit. It’s close, I can feel it. As much as I love adventure and seeing new places, I also love stability and routine. 

As for why I stopped blogging…

I worried I was starting to sound like a broken record, and that people were getting tired of hearing how tough of a time I was having. I worried I was getting too preachy. Too self-important. I worried people stopped reading what I wrote because they were bored. Or because they didn’t care. Worried that these posts, this blog, won’t go anywhere.

As much as I try and keep this blog as a diary for myself, I do love the idea of it reaching people far and wide, and I hope that it does. I hope people read what I write and think about it after the fact. I hope people can apply what I’m saying to their own lives.

But all that aside, I decided to pick this little blog back up because, in thirty years, I’ll want to read it, and in this moment, that is enough.

Thanks for reading 🙂