An unprecedented gift of time has allowed my stream of consciousness to slow from its rush. Memories forgotten and dissociated float up to the surface, careful enough to pick up and reflect. I’m realizing just how slowly I process, how distance allows me to see the whole picture.
I attempted world travel for the first time at 19, maybe four April’s ago. I moved to Paris in one surreal swoop. I landed, plopped down jet lagged and thought, “What the fuck did I just do?” But it worked.
That move solidified the independence I yearned for since second grade daydreams. My greatest lesson was that I could do anything, anywhere. This life is mine, and I would be the one to take myself where I needed to be.
Though it is not easy. I was such a lonely person, I didn’t know how to express myself or how to let other people in. But I always had myself, this mobility and freedom.
Now in Vietnam, after the marvelous experience of living in the truly international
city of New York, my heart swells and aches for the strain it goes through. Though I won’t return for a long time, my heart is there in the home I built.
Fear and freedom are my greatest motivators; pushing me to these far corners of the earth. I don’t want to die with regret, with wonder of what I might have done, what I might have seen or learnt. Though I was once so awkward and unsure, I knew that in my young bones.
My time abroad was never luxurious, but something I had to do to satiate this need for freedom. I am nostalgic, I miss going outside to marvel, to breathe in everything around me. I find myself writing each day these things I miss and long for.
I can’t live in fear of this life and what it has t offer. It amazes me now the world at a standstill, yet it turns without us. The colosseum will remain, vines grown over. The planet doesn’t need us to explore it, as important as we find our lives to be. We have such little time allotted, all of it unpredictable and all of it unpromised.
Appreciate your time by using it. Your love, your voice, your life. This is the only chance we know of.
This photo was taken by Maddy Sun, under the Eiffel Tower in 2016
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