More of an anxiety-induced word-vomit than anything:
In the spirit of keeping it real, there are a lot of times that I have doubts and mixed emotions about the path I’m on right now. I’d been thinking of this time in my life as a gap year between college and the “real world,” but that year has since come to an end and I feel nowhere near finished. Sometimes I feel like I’m not working hard enough, or like I should drop this act and get a “real job.” As my friends work their way up the corporate ladder, earning degrees and securing salaried positions, I feel further and further behind. Other times, I feel like I want to keep doing what I’m doing right now… forever. It’s a confusing cycle that keeps going around and around, and the people I meet tend to tip my feelings one way or another: because for reasons beyond my understanding, some people seem to love sharing their negative thoughts, opinions, and judgements when the path isn’t conventional. Those people can send me into a spiral.
Except then there are the people whose faces light up at my stories, who tell me to keep going, who tell me what I’m doing is amazing.
One day, I stopped by my grandmother’s house because she wanted to see pictures from my most recent trip. With her short-term memory, the only thing she could remember to keep saying was “I want to do this before I die.” Those few words practically broke my heart. To make matters even worse, my first thought after hearing them was that I don’t think she can travel anymore, not at her age and not in her declining state of health. My next thought was that I wish I could go back in time and give her better circumstances, a fighting chance to do everything she probably wanted to do her whole life and still wants to do at eighty years old. And my final thought was that her words have cemented the fact that despite the times I feel behind, I’ll never regret this time in my life—and that because I’m doing it now, I’ll hopefully reach her age someday and be able to look back on my life, knowing that I did everything I could have ever hoped to do and more.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I was a kid who couldn’t afford trips to Disney, who didn’t fly on a plane or see palm trees until fourteen, who lived off of her friends’ generous families and their beach houses and their vacations, pretending she lived there, pretending that was her life. The girl I used to be keeps me so in awe of who I am and what my life has become. She is why I always get excited to queue up a “takeoff song” on every single flight and then gaze out the window all heart-eyed as the plane lifts off of the ground, seemingly to the beat of that song; she is why I take hundreds and hundreds of pictures and videos on every trip, pictures of mundane things that some people wouldn’t give a second glance to, pictures of old buildings and pretty sunsets and margaritas and the ocean; she is why I walk around smiling at nothing and justify every souvenir purchase and collect magnets and write daily gratitudes. Thinking back on the girl who used to wish for the life I’m living now but didn’t fully believe it would ever be possible, I feel even more encouraged to keep going.
But sometimes that line gets blurred. Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve the good things that have happened to me. I feel spoiled as I count the countries I’ve been to; sharing details of where I’ve been and what I’ve done feels like bragging; posting feels like an obnoxious grab for attention. Which is why when people ask me “how was your trip?” I usually just say “it was so fun!” or “it was incredible!” and leave it at that. I don’t always know how to walk that line—I just know that I’m doing this for the version of me who daydreamed half her life away, hoping to get to where I am now.