Travel, and the Little, Big Moments of Freedom

Travel. It’s supposed to be a shift away from the ordinary, a break from everyday life, a journey.

So many of us travel for different reasons. Some run away from something, some to process major changes in our lives, or some to find something to run towards. Others embark upon a great search for meaning, or the search for a long lost feeling inside. Whatever the reason, I know that no two journeys are the same. Even if we return to the same place — it is a totally different time, and we are never the same person, the same combination of chemicals and molecules — looking out onto our scene.

I am taking a journey. I’m not sure that I even want to travel — but something inside of me knows that I have to. It is time for me to find the answers to everything.

They say that before you take a step into a new journey or chapter in your life, you should set your intention, or at least have some idea of what you want to get out of it. The problem is that I don’t know what I want anymore, and I couldn’t tell you what I want out of my travels. I guess that’s why I’m here — that’s why I created this space, and started writing this post.

You see — I used to be that guy who had his whole life mapped out — who thought he knew exactly what he wanted. Who knew that you had to push and strive to achieve and succeed to get something of satisfaction in this small lifetime. I knew from losing my father at a young age that we only get a tiny dash in which to really live between our entry and exit dates on this World.

The problem is — I don’t know who I am or what I want anymore. I overidentified as a grade A student — throwing myself into overachieving and getting validation from my teachers and Mum in order to escape the painful truth that my Dad had tragically died young, and that I was a raging homosexual trying his hardest to hide it from the World. I was then obsessed with becoming a singer, and poured my whole energy and finances into trying to get something professionally going for over ten years, only to find myself emptier, lonelier and more depressed than ever. And then it all just stopped. I felt buried underneath something. Crushed by the weight of some immovable spiritual rock. And I didn’t have the resources or energy to dig myself out. So I just lied there for years, under the ground.

Slowly and painfully, something shifted over the last year. I started shakily reaching feelers out from the shell of a person that I had fossilised into over the last decade. At a crawling pace, I unsteadily took one step forward then two steps back, and sometimes just fell into retreating back to my bed for days on end, almost relapsing to a corpse-like state. But then I got back up and tried again. I even managed to have seconds of some days feeling like I am a functioning human person. So I’m here. And even though I have this constant, palpitating anxiety, I’m still alive.

Then I tried. I tried the whole having what other people seem to think is a proper adult life. A room of my own in a big city, a road to a career. I went back to University and started studying a Masters in something that I was vaguely interested in — Magazine Journalism — because what I wanted was to express myself — to write, and write about the things that really matter. About art that moves us — not science. But every minute of every day in class, they were trying to shape me into a writer that I didn’t want to be — one who followed formulas and templates — and who studied media law, sub-editing, ethics and could generate clicks for websites. But I didn’t want to be who they wanted me to be anymore. That was me in a different life.

That’s when I sat down and realised — I was in fear. I was too scared to pursue what I really wanted. I wanted to write what I wanted, and to write about emotions, feelings, grief, heartache, pain, love, hope, destiny. All the important things, in my voice, in a way that only I could. This would be a life of freedom — a life of awe — a life of mystery. I don’t want what I know — or what others have. I want to pursue the unknown — well at least what is unknown to me. I don’t want to be on a road that will take me to a job I know that I don’t want — editing other people’s work and waiting years in line to get chances to write tiny copy that may be published somewhere that someone may read — after being heavily edited and formatted.

But my mind was freaking out. Didn’t I want security and comforts? Shouldn’t I be grateful at all for an opportunity to write anything? No. I can’t play that game. I might only get to roll the dice on life once. I gotta go for it. I don’t want to play anyone else’s game — for once. I don’t want that safe, nice plan where my soul and my dreams are being lost and crushed further every minute. I don’t want to be limited by what others say or think. How about surrendering to a greater imagination than even I can conceive of?

So here I shall write. I shall write it all. Writing is my therapy. This journal is where I bring my soul back into communion with itself. I want to spill the truth. I want to empty out my despair. I want to be ok with not knowing what I want. I want to stop forcing myself to do things that I don’t really don’t want to do. Maybe when I finally stop trying so hard, maybe that’s when I find my little, big moments of freedom.