‘Traveller’s Pieces Syndrome’
I believe that when you travel, you leave pieces of yourself behind.
Last year when my boyfriend was leaving Barcelona for his dream job in France, I said that I didn’t want to be in a long distance relationship. Some may enjoy it, having your time to yourself and then seeing your partner once every so often. It can be fun, it can be exciting but the way I saw it: I became a half-human.
I call it half-human because I felt that I was never 100% myself. When I was out on a Saturday night with our friends, I was wishing he was there. Plus, I’d often be on my phone texting or calling him so I wasn’t 100% ‘there’. We were never able to plan our visits properly so I wouldn’t make plans in case that was the only weekend he was free. Yet by doing so, I’d just automatically not be included in friend’s plans. This was made increasingly harder when COVID restricted gatherings to 6 people. I would count the days till we were together. Then I’d still not be 100% myself when he was here cause I was missing out on moments with my friends. Eternally unsatisfied. I feel like that will be written on my tombstone
This did however help me to understand why I didn’t really feel whole in the first place. So let’s get back to the point.
I believe that when you travel, you leave pieces of yourself behind.
Once you’ve lived anywhere else but your home town. You have multiple homes. Multiple friend groups, multiple favourite bars, favourite parks, favourite view points. Multiple yous? The more places you live the more places you love. That is why we travel. There are so many amazing places to see and people to meet. However, the more places become home, the more spread out you feel, the more you feel like you’ve left a piece of you somewhere, you are incomplete.
Someone once asked me if I was afraid that if I travelled too much I’d never fit back in to my life in my home town (Dolo, France). I thought he was just closed-minded, arrogant even, but maybe he was just wise. It’s true, sometimes when returning from a trip you feel that you no longer ‘fit’ back into your old life, or sometimes anywhere. You don’t fit the mold, or tick the right boxes. I am French to my English friends, and English to my French friends. I can’t vote in either country and many jobs and opportunities are unavailable to me because I am a national of one country and a resident of the other. This is a whole other debate.
After my last article, a few people reached out, and not in the way I expected. One said that she was sad because she often reached out to me when she heard that I was back in our home town but I never took the time to see her. She’s right, I often pop home for a weekend to see my family, or cause a friend has a gig, or for some health appointments. I am always rushed around trying to see everyone. Times like these, you spend your time repeating your story, trying to explain the things you’ve seen, the life you’ve led etc. but often feel totally disconnected from the people who are/were closest to you. So after a while you just give up and keep the chat to a simple ‘I’m good thanks, how are you?’. I racked my brain to figure out why I’d stopped making time for said friend. I realised that it could have been after we met up once and she showed me the really nice new car she’d just bought. It didn’t make sense to me, at the time, why someone our age early twenties would spend so much money on anything, especially a car, you could go around the world twice with that money, and I think that’s when I created the void between us. My priorities were and often still are very much out of sync with my friend’s.
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The other friend that reached out is my friend Claudia. She is in a similar predicament to me right now ‘globetrotter living in a covid limbo’ and she asked me: “How do you become whole again?’. I do not have the answer to this question but It’s nice to know you’re not alone.
I met Claudia, in 2012, in a hostel (or was it a bar?) in Seville. I consider her my first travel friend. She’s the first one who convinced me to change my holiday plan and hop on a bus to join her and her (our) friend Kurt on an adventure. I stayed with Kurt and his incredible wife Cara in New York in 2016, but I’ve never seen Claudia again. Nevertheless, she is my friend and someone I care about. I care about her as much as I do the friend I described above, who I’ve known since I was about 10-years old.
When you travel, the bond you make with the people you meet is different than the one you have with people at home, or at school, or at work. It’s funny because some become true life long friends. Some you will just have an incredible day, night, or few hours with, you keep fond memories of them, yet never really speak again. You’ll never be in that moment again. Sometimes you meet up again, somewhere else, and you just don’t click anymore. People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. My good friend Pita (who I met in a hostel in Brazil) taught me this. I guess some people are just seasonal. You can still miss those people though. You watch the social media stories of the people you met in an amazing place, who are still there, going to the same spots you love and you get the god awful Fomo. Then there are the ones that are still on the road, still living the dream, and you wish you could just jump on a plane and join them.
I’ve left pieces of myself in so many places, that I rarely feel whole. I call London, Dolo (France), and Barcelona my homes. I left pieces of me across Latin America: in a hut in Cabo Polonia, in the stars in San Pedro de Atacama in a hammock on Isla Mujeres. I sprinkled myself across South east Asia: from a surf board in Seminyak, to a Skybar in Bangkok. I left a huge chunk of my heart or my maybe soul in Uganda. I listen to songs that bring me back to places in a heartbeat. But even some songs are split into pieces and shared in different memories. I hear Tale Impala and it reminds me of both Lollapalooza with the Remote Year ‘Battutas’ in Buenos Aires and Primavera Sound with Ben and my close friends in Barcelona. I am attached not only to people but places. Memories are my true treasures. Everything changes, even the places themselves. I cried when I saw images of Beirut on fire or ones of San Andres and Providencia island destroyed by Hurricane Iota.
I have a connection with my boyfriend Ben because he has pieces everywhere too. Not only that, but we have pieces in some of the same places. The bars are currently still closed in France, and he asked me the other day, if I could go to any bar or club right now where would I go. Carabela or Travel Bar in Barcelona, Ruko n Roll in Sevilla, Bubbles in Kampala, the Space in Pleneuf. It would be a place where I would be guaranteed to bump into friends. I am blessed to have friends across the world. So many good strong girl friends in more than a dozen countries I can think of right now. I would have never met them had I not travelled and I would not be ‘me’ without them.
I’m now back at the drawing board applying for jobs, trying to decide whether long-distance is doable? Is China too far? Why don’t I go back to Barcelona where I have a family? Or to London where I have Emma and Bronwen and their incredible friend group? Paris where I have Pauline, Marion, Marielle, a whole bunch of high school and work friends? Nantes where I have Max and co? Heidi and Cora are in Vancouver? Sabrina is in Brussels? The world is my oyster(ish thanks Covid).
I am realising now that as much as I still want to discover the whole entire world, I am reluctant to go somewhere new because I know it will take another piece of me. I am growing concerned by things that I’d heard people say before but never related to. For example, the fact that I already have little time for the people currently in my life, how do I make room for more? Do I have more pieces to give away?
But at the end of the day, travelling is in my gut. It’s an ache you can’t explain to someone who does’t fell it. I yearn to learn about the world and share my experiences. I may not be whole, but I am filled with curiosity and love. What a cheeseball. As Eat, Pray and Love’s Elizabeth Gilbert says,I shall continue to be a hummingbird, ‘creating a rich and complex life for myself and cross-pollinating the world.’. Shared to my by my first and best friend Emma. Leaving pieces of myself everywhere I go. Daisies can grow in most places right?
For some reason I’ve had this song in my head whilst writing this so I’m just gonna drop this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJCsyLUCSXI
