This Is The Part Of Traveling That Scares Me

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I’m not talking about needing a break, a week long vacation on a beach in some semi-exotic location.

It’s that feeling you get you day, you wake up and decide you’ve been stationary for too long. It’s time to go, somewhere, anywhere. It’s like a drug and you’re having withdrawals. They won’t go away until you satisfy your craving.

You start calculating everything you have to do to leave. Choose a destination, figure out how you will fund your existence, tell the necessary people, and pack. The latter is the easiest because this isn’t the first time, and you’ve learned how to live light. The week’s fly by, and all of a sudden you’re in your happy place – In Transit, waiting for your ETA.

The one constant in your life is that everything’s amazing when it’s new. There’s new terrain, brilliant people, and activities to test out.
You fit in quickly; you’ve learned how to blend in at a moments notice.
Your friends envy your passport stamps, and Instagram photos. Your family awaits check-ins, and updates.

You’re so busy you don’t even notice you’re alone; you want to make the most of every second.

At some point you crawl into bed, usually you’d fall asleep instantly, but this time you can’t.

The feeling just kind of creeps up on you, at first you don’t even know what it is. Maybe the blankets aren’t warm enough, or you’re just having trouble falling asleep?

Soon enough you realize that they’re not the blankets that you became accustomed to in your previous location, and there’s no one to keep you warm because you left them behind.

I call it the adjustment period. It’s like homesickness, but you have no real home.

You enter the stage where you question your choice to go, and if you should continue.

Because loneliness is a hollowing feeling, and you never get used to it.

You won’t remember how it felt, or that you even felt it when it’s over. You’ll form new relationships, find a new routine, or keep moving and get distracted. I don’t know when it happens, but you get used to the feeling, and it fades in the abyss.

You might be lucky enough to find an equal, with true wanderlust just like you, and you can ease each other’s adjustment period.

The truth is, it’s not a choice, this is just the price of feeding the addiction.