The solo trip was my whole life, now it fears and does not make me happy

During most of my twenty, the trip was all my personality.

I was not only someone who loved the holidays, I was a traveler – The genre that lived in a backpack, prioritized the destinations by the distance from the beaten track, and said yes to just about everything that looked like an adventure.

So, when I started to feel a little stuck last summer at almost 29 years old, I did what had always worked before: I wrapped a bag, reserved a single -way ticket and I left.

My first weeks at Costa Rica were perfect. Awnings of the misty jungle. Cafés by the sea. This particular type of freedom which has just not known what the next day, even time, could hold.

But then, one afternoon, the hike through the jungle, looking at the scarlet macaws flash in the sky, I felt it: nothing.

No fear, not surprising, just a dull and creeping conscience that I had seen all this before, that I could be anywhere, that nothing touched me as he did.

I didn’t have fun. Worse, I didn’t feel anything at all.

The trip had stopped feeling like a discovery and had started to feel like an escape

At the beginning of the twenty, traveling alone was exhilarating. It forced me in the present moment.

Each day was an intensive course independently: finding bus schedules, trying the most adventurous street foods that I could find and meet foreigners who felt like old friends at sunset.

Now Travel just felt like it was fleeing. I did not discover new things about myself. I was not growing. I was not even particularly interested in where I was.

I had spent years convincing myself that the next place would retain all the answers. But here, I was, in another breathtaking destination, I feel completely numb.

I started to miss things I had never thought about twice: familiar faces, a favorite coffee where baristas know your order and the plans that extend beyond the next flight.

For the first time, I was wondering if this lifestyle had an expiration date, if perhaps what was used in the past expansive now was empty.

It turns out that the most difficult thing does not leave – it remains

When I returned to the United States, I expected to feel relief. Instead, I felt agitated in a way that travel could not repair.

Although my trip was not satisfactory, I have always found myself refreshing flight offers at midnight and itchs for the next destination.

For years, the movement had made me comfort. As long as I was in movement, I never had to sit with the most difficult questions: what do I really want? What kind of life do I try to build?

The trips had given me so much, but it had also become a distraction.

The most difficult awareness was that what I really needed – which meant me the most – was to stay in the same place for a long time to build something real.

A deeply significant life is not found in a constant movement, it is built over time. It is in friendships that deepen over the years, not days. The feeling of belonging that grows by presenting itself again and again. The goal that has just engaged in something, even when it is not exciting at all times.

Travel will always be part of my life, but I no longer see it as the answer to everything.

My next real challenge is to learn to stay, and sometimes it takes even more courage than reserving a single -way ticket.