on traveling and me

I did a throwback the other day, for Thursday. It’s been a long time since I really thought long and hard about my trip to Africa and exactly how much I loved it.  Ironically and also a little bit pathetically, I cried when I went through those pictures.  I thought, “How can I live in this world now, but was once in a completely different universe, and forget about it?”  I was a little ashamed at how easily I had forgotten the things that I had learned and put aside the way that it changed me into a new person with a new perspective.  As a person who was absolutely enthralled with the stories but also didn’t want to risk the persona of looking like a brag that wanted to force her more interesting life on top of someone else’s, I hid it all away because of embarrassment of looking prideful.  But that wasn’t how I wanted to remember it.  So I decided that I should remember it and share it. Because there is something about traveling that sets me on fire like nothing else.  I don’t know how its possible, but I find myself completely comfortable and at home in a foreign world that I had never seen.  I feel a fresh sense of life and its passion to learn and experience every single person in this world and every single thing that I could learn.  It’s an ironic thing, but there is nothing that brings me out of my shell and makes me feel more myself than being abroad. And I forgot that about myself. Between the expenses, the jet lag, and incredible amount of time that it takes, I got mixed up in the problems, and put away the passion.  But I would rather live a penniless life with an unconventional sleeping pattern so that I could travel than put aside the one thing that I remembered is my thing. WIth all the places I've been and the things I've seen, I don't think I could ever say that traveling is not for me. And I find comfort in that.