Travel Aftermaths: You Can Never Really Go Home Again

There’s a part of traveling that people don’t talk about: perhaps the hardest part.

Yes, we live in a global society where words like “travel” and “wanderlust” and sayings like “not all those who wander are lost” are thrown about so much they have become cringe-worthy clichés.

Books like Eat, Pray, Love glamorize the idea of traveling to find oneself (and perhaps even love!) so much that it has become stale. This makes it difficult for snarky writers with degrees in English Literature (read: huge literary critics) like myself to admit that the overused “I found myself through travel!” saying is entirely true.

Travel changes you.

I’m not talking about the kind of travel where you pack your best clothes into a shiny suitcase to spend a week on a yacht in the Mediterranean.

I’m talking about the kind of travel where you have to tell your parents that you’re quitting your swanky managerial job in your swanky glass skyscraper and spending all of money you have been saving for a down payment to run around the world alone until you feel like coming home, if you do at all.

You tell your boss, who is sad to see you go. You tell your friends, who think you’ve gone insane and are worried you’ll get axe-murdered in a hostel in some town with a name no one can pronounce.

You book a one-way ticket and accommodation for the first few weeks, wondering if you indeed have gone insane and will get axe-murdered in a hostel in some town with a name no one can pronounce.

And then you’re off.

The next x-amount of time is spent being hopelessly lost, looking for directions, chasing planes / trains / ships / buses, waking up not knowing where you are, trying to communicate across a multitude of languages, wondering how much time you have left before you’re completely broke, and of course, experiencing some of the greatest happiness of your life.

All that? That was the easy part.

Because afterwards, you learn that, while you may physically find yourself back in the city you used to call “home” and back at a swanky managerial job in a swanky glass skyscraper, you’re just not really there anymore.

And you have no idea what to do about it.

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” – Miriam Adeney

When I was returning from Europe in December, I said that this could be my last trip abroad and that I’m not so young anymore that I can afford to simply drop everything and go. I said that it was time to get my life in order.

I had a plan. Get a job, study for the GMAT, get an MBA from the University of British Columbia, work at a consulting firm, and eventually start my own business providing consulting services to Asian companies wishing to break into the North American market. I’d find someone, get married, buy property, have 2.3 (or whatever the average is now) kids, grow old, retire, etc. etc.

I was going to settle down and stop dreaming about grandiose adventures in distant lands because I’m just not that young anymore.

Then, within a span of 48 hours, about the time it took me to get from my hotel in Krynica, Poland to my residence in Vancouver, Canada, the normal, society-approved life plan that I had laid out for myself fell to pieces.

I realized how badly I didn’t want to go “home.”

I wondered if Vancouver was still indeed my home.

Something in me probably already knew I didn’t want to return to Vancouver because I delayed booking a flight until 2 weeks beforehand and the cheapest itinerary I could find during the mad December rush took me on a 5-plane detour around Europe. I had a stopover in Moscow and debated staying a few days to see the city—anything to delay my return—but I wouldn’t have been able to get an entry visa in time.

The last of my 5 flights was from London to Vancouver. I reached my departure gate at Heathrow Airport, saw the bright monitor that read “VANCOUVER 17:25,” and began to feel a deep and consuming sense of dread.

I took a photo of my departure gate and sent it to a friend I had made in Budapest in the summer. He had been on the road for several months and went home to Colorado, USA in late August.

“This is weirding me out,” I said. “I’ve been gone for half a year.”

“If your return was anything like mine you are going to feel weird for at least 3 months,” he said. “I still can’t readjust.”

“I’m already considering where to go next,” I said.

“I bet the urge will get even stronger the longer you are in Vancouver,” he replied.

“I feel like I’m walking into a death sentence,” I said. “Just started freaking out ahhhhh help!”

I almost didn’t board the plane.

Sure, I was being melodramatic, but as I sat strapped into my numbered seat flying through 8 time zones, I found myself intently watching the hours count down on my small personal screen. I realized that, despite how uncomfortable air travel is, I was willing time to pass slower so I wouldn’t have to touch down in Vancouver.

After all, aside from some friends and immediate family, there was nothing waiting for me on the other side.

I had left my happiness in Budapest, my freedom on the Adriatic Sea, and my heart in Amsterdam.

The metro ride home from the airport was surreal. The lights on the train were darker than I remembered, and the trains smaller and noisier. I was able to understand every word the people around me were saying and it made me uneasy.

I was hired for a well-paid, full-time position 18 hours after I landed and started work the following day. I was so booked with contract jobs, DJ gigs, and reunions with friends that I didn’t sleep off my jet leg for 2 weeks, when my office closed for the holidays.

On my first day off, I messaged this Dutchman I had met in Amsterdam in October and said, “This is my first day off for holidays and I’m already going crazy. I have to go in and do some more work tomorrow though and am actually happy to do it.”

“You rather go to the office?” he asked.

“I’m bored,” I said, “I’d rather go make some money. Haven’t adjusted to being home at all. I think my brain is still floating on the Atlantic Ocean somewhere.”

“Got lost somewhere between 5 flights,” he said.

“Somewhere between 12 countries!” I replied, “Or maybe just somewhere in the Netherlands. Who knows.”

“Must have been before Amsterdam. I remember you doing crazy stuff.”

I could almost hear him chortling as he recalled some of the stories I told him.

Yes, I had done crazy stuff.

I had thrown all caution wantonly to the wind and had done a world of crazy stuff.

And it changed me.

Over sangria one evening, my best girlfriend said to me, “You know, after I read your post about coming home, I said to my husband, ‘Grace is coming home in chains.'”

Vancouver feels small and stifling. The streets are stagnant and the buildings listless yet nothing has really changed. A new department store opened. A beloved bookstore closed. Some relationships started, others ended. Some people got promotions, some bought property, and a few children were born.

My friends and family still mean the world to me. Vancouver is still beautiful with its oceans, glass towers, and snow-capped mountains but I don’t fit in anymore.

I feel like I’ve outgrown this city.

Strangely enough, even though I had once gone to Asia for a year in my early 20s, I was eager to return to Vancouver and overjoyed to simply live a normal life in the city I loved.

Perhaps what it is, is that, before I had gone to Asia at 21, I wasn’t grown up enough yet for this city. Now, after my stint in Europe, I have outgrown it.

I’ve been trying to tell my friends about the richness of the world that I, 25 countries later, have only started to experience. They are in awe but cannot relate.

I started going through my friends’ list and messaged everyone who was the traveling kind.

There was the mechanical engineer who runs a successful business and never shows up to events around town because he is always somewhere else.

There’s the half-Canadian, half-Chinese fashion model whom I used to manage back when I was the director of a talent agency. I sent her overseas to work 4 years ago and haven’t seen her since.

There’s the aforementioned friend whom I had met in Budapest. He had finished his service in the US Army, decided to hop on a plane to Europe with no plans, and spent several months backpacking the continent.

There’s the 2 Montreal-Canadian girls I met at a hostel in Split, the brother-sister traveling duo from Winnipeg on a bus to Plivice Lakes National Park, and the surprisingly smart American frat-boy from Chicago I met in Rome.

Every single one of them had trouble adjusting back to normal life. Some, like Canadian/Chinese model, didn’t even have to because she simply never came back.

My mother said to me the other day, “It looks like not only did you not file down those needles on your butt, but you grew even more needles.”

“Once you get the travel bug, it never goes away,” the mechanical engineer told me. He’s in his mid-30s and has spent most of his life traversing all of the continents of the world, so I trust he knows what he’s talking about.

Basically, what he’s saying is that I’m screwed.

If anyone wants to commiserate about post-travel depression, message me!