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| Let's see where this path will take me to! |
“I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.” ― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
Traveling is my thing. Born in a Midwestern family, I grew up throwing tantrums every time I find out someone's going out of the United States to see the world.
Why can't it happen to me? Why not me?
I got a passport as a high school graduation present.
I immediately signed up for a Study Abroad in France course during my freshman year at college.
I made no summer plans just so I can be prepared to leave the United States at the last notice if needed.
Perfect plan, eh?
Well, if you include several vital facts: the fact that my passport hadn't been stamped, the fact that I got talked out of going to France, and especially the fact that my summer plans were exactly what I've planned for: no summer plans.
In other words, #epicfail at my first attempt to leave the country.
No, please don't feel awful for me. Like J.K. Rowling told the Harvard graduates years ago, there are indeed fringe benefits of failure. So, #epicfail is actually #ablessingindisguise.
Because I failed miserably at my first attempt to get out of the United States, I returned to college vowing to leave college armed with a plane ticket to the destination outside the country I was born in.
2009. Twenty years old. Young, full of hopes, and completely clueless about the world. I finally, finally, finally found myself on the plane bound for Mendoza, Argentina, where I will be spending the next two months (I moved to Santiago, Chile in the second month of maundering my way through cultural shock).
When I returned to the United States two months later, I was speaking with a Chilean accent and insisting on drinking mate like the Argentineans. I was permanently addicted to the whole idea of seeing the world and particularly the idea of living the other way of life.
By the time 2010 arrived, I again boarded the plane and left for Europe, where I was to study abroad in Paris, France (romantic!), where I was to travel alone (brave!), and where I was to explore the point of life (philosophical!) for three glorious months.
Needless to say, I came back to the United States feeling quite changed. Paris was not a romantic place like I've always thought it was. It was . . . just an old city filled with I-am-better-than-thou snobs who proudly consider themselves glamorous Parisenes. Traveling alone was not a brave step; it was one small step for me and one great leap for my life. Exploring life brought me again and again to the revolutionary idea of life being always on your side. I saw so much. I experienced so much. I felt so much. This trip was so much, too much, of a wondrous adventure. I was taller, braver, wiser, and calmer in my outlook of the world. I was done with my personal development. I was done with understanding myself. Man, I was all set to conquer the world!
Apparently, life disagreed. She kindly informed me in such a brutal fashion that just because I've seen the world most definitely doesn't mean I've seen everything within myself.
Long story short: I had what the old-timers like to refer to as the annus horribilis during my last year of college (fuck, it was supposed to be the beeeeesssst year of my life!). Nearly everyone I knew either joined a fraternity/sorority or led the pledge program, effectively ditching me to my own amusements. Then my grandmother died suddenly. Although she was ninety years old and we've been waiting for her to depart, the fact that she suddenly (and peacefully) disappeared from my life stung my heart. And then I got my heart broken.
Imagine the year of being deserted by your friends, deprived of your beloved grandmother, and all your little pains in life exacerbated by the pain of your shattered heart. That year couldn't be any worse, right?
Wrong.
Sometimes it was a curse to be a human being. Just because you feel your life is all fucked up, you suddenly develop a crazy impulse to fuck it up even more. I mean, it couldn't be any worse so why bother trying to keep it less than worse?
I dyed my hair black. I fell and landed right on my left elbow twice. I showed up at work hungover from bar-hopping until sunrise. I picked up every single argument I have with a friend and brought it to such a level that it either makes or breaks our friendship.
It was getting more and more hopeless.
I graduated with high honors with a very heavy heart and an angry attitude towards the world and then headed home to continue my downward spiral toward hell.
The rock bottom finally appeared on July 4, 2011. Independence Day. The day I finally liberated myself from my personal hell.
July 4, 2011 was a special date forever ingrained in my life story. Before July 4, 2011 happened, I had transformed from a young woman forever fueled with ambition and love for life into this depressive woman furious at life for betraying her and for disputing her ambitious dreams.
What were my dreams? What was my destiny? I was supposed to be special. I was supposed to be destined for something great. Why can't life just help me? What was wrong with me?
I had no answers to these questions, and I think it was the most horrifying discovery I ever made back then. I must have answers.
"Oh, Elizabeth, just relax! Life will take you to where you should be." One man laughed, winking at me.
"Elizabeth, honey, that's just life. Accept that fact," my mother said, sighing at my misery.
"Just go with the flow!" One friend smiled.
"Elizabeth? I thought you are in Europe. What are you doing here?" the other friend frowned.
These answers made me feel even more incompetent. Why can't I just relax? Why can't I simply accept? Why can't I go with the flow? Why wasn't I in Europe? What was I doing here?
On the night of July 4, 2011, I went to the carnival with my friends. I was ready to let loose. I was ready to get shit-faced. I was ready to go wild, the only exhilarating feeling I could elicit from this disastrous life.
Sure enough, I got exactly what I was hoping for on this night.
And I remembered absolutely nothing.
The last thing I remembered was telling a friend I must go to the restroom. The next thing I remembered was waking up in the hospital.
I am dying. It is getting over.
I gasped.
But I don't want to die! I have so much to do, so much to see, so much to love, and so much to live for!
I began to cry.
My sobs must be getting louder and louder because the nurse rushed into the room. She saw that I was awake and immediately left. Within a minute, my friend entered the room with the nurse. She was smiling.
"Am I going to die?!" I cried out.
My friend shook her head, laughing.
"Oh, no. You were so awfully drunk. They had to take you to the hospital. You're having alcohol poisoning," she explained, chuckling.
No, please don't feel awful for me. Like J.K. Rowling told the Harvard graduates years ago, there are indeed fringe benefits of failure. So, #epicfail is actually #ablessingindisguise.
Because I failed miserably at my first attempt to get out of the United States, I returned to college vowing to leave college armed with a plane ticket to the destination outside the country I was born in.
2009. Twenty years old. Young, full of hopes, and completely clueless about the world. I finally, finally, finally found myself on the plane bound for Mendoza, Argentina, where I will be spending the next two months (I moved to Santiago, Chile in the second month of maundering my way through cultural shock).
When I returned to the United States two months later, I was speaking with a Chilean accent and insisting on drinking mate like the Argentineans. I was permanently addicted to the whole idea of seeing the world and particularly the idea of living the other way of life.
By the time 2010 arrived, I again boarded the plane and left for Europe, where I was to study abroad in Paris, France (romantic!), where I was to travel alone (brave!), and where I was to explore the point of life (philosophical!) for three glorious months.
Needless to say, I came back to the United States feeling quite changed. Paris was not a romantic place like I've always thought it was. It was . . . just an old city filled with I-am-better-than-thou snobs who proudly consider themselves glamorous Parisenes. Traveling alone was not a brave step; it was one small step for me and one great leap for my life. Exploring life brought me again and again to the revolutionary idea of life being always on your side. I saw so much. I experienced so much. I felt so much. This trip was so much, too much, of a wondrous adventure. I was taller, braver, wiser, and calmer in my outlook of the world. I was done with my personal development. I was done with understanding myself. Man, I was all set to conquer the world!
Apparently, life disagreed. She kindly informed me in such a brutal fashion that just because I've seen the world most definitely doesn't mean I've seen everything within myself.
Long story short: I had what the old-timers like to refer to as the annus horribilis during my last year of college (fuck, it was supposed to be the beeeeesssst year of my life!). Nearly everyone I knew either joined a fraternity/sorority or led the pledge program, effectively ditching me to my own amusements. Then my grandmother died suddenly. Although she was ninety years old and we've been waiting for her to depart, the fact that she suddenly (and peacefully) disappeared from my life stung my heart. And then I got my heart broken.
Imagine the year of being deserted by your friends, deprived of your beloved grandmother, and all your little pains in life exacerbated by the pain of your shattered heart. That year couldn't be any worse, right?
Wrong.
Sometimes it was a curse to be a human being. Just because you feel your life is all fucked up, you suddenly develop a crazy impulse to fuck it up even more. I mean, it couldn't be any worse so why bother trying to keep it less than worse?
I dyed my hair black. I fell and landed right on my left elbow twice. I showed up at work hungover from bar-hopping until sunrise. I picked up every single argument I have with a friend and brought it to such a level that it either makes or breaks our friendship.
It was getting more and more hopeless.
I graduated with high honors with a very heavy heart and an angry attitude towards the world and then headed home to continue my downward spiral toward hell.
The rock bottom finally appeared on July 4, 2011. Independence Day. The day I finally liberated myself from my personal hell.
July 4, 2011 was a special date forever ingrained in my life story. Before July 4, 2011 happened, I had transformed from a young woman forever fueled with ambition and love for life into this depressive woman furious at life for betraying her and for disputing her ambitious dreams.
What were my dreams? What was my destiny? I was supposed to be special. I was supposed to be destined for something great. Why can't life just help me? What was wrong with me?
I had no answers to these questions, and I think it was the most horrifying discovery I ever made back then. I must have answers.
"Oh, Elizabeth, just relax! Life will take you to where you should be." One man laughed, winking at me.
"Elizabeth, honey, that's just life. Accept that fact," my mother said, sighing at my misery.
"Just go with the flow!" One friend smiled.
"Elizabeth? I thought you are in Europe. What are you doing here?" the other friend frowned.
These answers made me feel even more incompetent. Why can't I just relax? Why can't I simply accept? Why can't I go with the flow? Why wasn't I in Europe? What was I doing here?
On the night of July 4, 2011, I went to the carnival with my friends. I was ready to let loose. I was ready to get shit-faced. I was ready to go wild, the only exhilarating feeling I could elicit from this disastrous life.
Sure enough, I got exactly what I was hoping for on this night.
And I remembered absolutely nothing.
The last thing I remembered was telling a friend I must go to the restroom. The next thing I remembered was waking up in the hospital.
I am dying. It is getting over.
I gasped.
But I don't want to die! I have so much to do, so much to see, so much to love, and so much to live for!
I began to cry.
My sobs must be getting louder and louder because the nurse rushed into the room. She saw that I was awake and immediately left. Within a minute, my friend entered the room with the nurse. She was smiling.
"Am I going to die?!" I cried out.
My friend shook her head, laughing.
"Oh, no. You were so awfully drunk. They had to take you to the hospital. You're having alcohol poisoning," she explained, chuckling.
I later learned that I had downed the entire bottle of Grey Goose vodka within an hour and promptly blacked out, missing out on more than two hours of crazy antics and inspiring conversations. My wild night ended with me all sprawling out on the middle of the street, insisting that I wanted to take a nap right there, and the police surrounding around me. One of the cops told my friends that they couldn't take me home in this kind of condition. I was obviously inebriated beyond my own good and required immediate medical attention.
That was my rock bottom.
Once I hit upon my rock bottom, I liberated myself from the destructive need of punishing myself. I let go of my failures. I let go of my old perspective of life. I let go of my despair.
I was free.
Within weeks after my liberation, I moved to New Mexico to start my new job. One year later, I entered graduate school to begin my Master's Degree in Linguistics.
In the summer of 2013, I took up my passion for traveling yet again and returned to Europe with my best friend to backpack across Eastern Europe. We had the wildest and best summer ever together and brought home hundreds of photographs, dozens of videos, and thousands of memories, some remembered perfectly and others blurry.
I am beginning to recognize the beauty of traveling itself. It is true when they tell you that traveling teaches you things that you cannot learn in school. The lessons you gain from your trips adjust your perspective about people, life, and especially yourself. You learn so much about yourself through doing things you never thought you could do, living through experiences that you would never experience, and surviving difficult situations that you used to assume you would not survive. That is the essential beauty of traveling: through traveling, you are introduced to yourself, which opens even more doors to the world.
On September 8th of this year, I will be leaving the United States once again to open more doors to myself and to gradually undo the mystery of myself by seeing the world through my eyes. India is the destination, and I have an one-way ticket with every intention of letting life blows me to where I am meant to go.
May you enjoy my narration and may you go where I am going on this uncharted journey.
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