Writing this while sitting in Snell library procrastinating on my last semester of university. Pushing aside a full load of homework, a bunch of work I should be doing for my 2 part-time jobs, and a whole lot of emails I could be responding to for work I do with a venture accelerator. But here I go anyways.

August 3, 2015 to September 5, 2016: What a year it has been. Contrary to what most of you believe, I was not in fact on a gap year. I was “studying, working, and living” in Madrid, Spain. But I use those terms very loosely. I spent 30% of this year outside of Madrid and making a home here in Europe. Don’t worry mum and dad, I passed all my classes, didn’t get fired, and paid my rent. But I also had the time of my life, growing a bit every day, experiencing the world, and fine-tuning myself both in and out of Madrid.

But travelling and being abroad, that’s the easy part. The new friends, the new experiences, and the new you. You leave behind the “real” world and set off on an adventure. You don’t realize how much you’ve grown until you look back and see how far you’ve come. True, you have your ups and downs. I had my fair share of ups and downs, highs and lows, joys and fears. The downs though are always, always, always outweighed by the ups. The rush of adrenaline as you paraglide down a mountain, the buzz in the hostel bar, the adjustment into a new city. But this blog post is about the hardest part about travelling that no one talks about. What makes this incredible experience so difficult?

“They call it the travel bug, but really it’s the effort to return to a place where you are surrounded by people who speak the same language as you. Not English or Spanish or Mandarin or Portuguese, but that language where others know what it’s like to leave, change, grow, experience, learn, then go home again and feel more lost in your hometown than you did in the most foreign place you visited.”

This is from an article I stumbled across after I came back from Seville two years (wow, two years ago). The hardest part of travelling isn’t the missed flights, the occasional wallet or phone being stolen (or the sleazy bus driver that blatantly stole my phone that I luckily stole back when I saw it in his back pocket in my case), the language barriers, or the stomach bug that we always seem to catch at one point or another along the way. The hardest part of travelling isn’t even the goodbyes you say to the new friends you’ve made. And that part is really hard, let me tell you. When you travel, your path doesn’t cross for long periods of time with people. You can always see the goodbyes in the horizon.

But there’s something about knowing that which makes these friendships so much stronger. You live in small spaces with them, you spend every waking second of the day with them because you know your time with them is fleeting, and you experience high-stress situations together. You get to know someone so in-depth and so quickly. You open up more to these people because us travellers have this mentality. This mentality free of judgment and full of love for exploration.

So these friendships are strong, stronger than some friendships I have back home. These friendships are based on an understanding of one another. Not an understanding of all the little nuisances in the lives of everyone we encounter but of the mere fact that we all have pain, secrets, and demons in our lives. We don’t need to know what they are. We don’t even need to share what our own demons are. But just understanding that someone may react a certain way or lash out in a certain way because of the demons they’re struggling with, the secrets they’re keeping, and the pain they’re trying to hide is enough.  So when you have to leave them, knowing well that you might not ever cross paths again in this universe, it’s devastating.

But that’s not even the hardest part of travelling. Because these people, these memories, and these places will forever be tattooed on your heart. They become a part of you. Their energy gets channeled into yours. And you go on, calling more places in the world your home, thinking about them every now and again, and continuing on with the journeys you both set out for yourselves. They make up who you are. The conversations and memories you’ve had together feed into your way of thinking, way of seeing the world, and way of embracing and cherishing every new person you meet.

So what is the hardest part of travelling? The hardest part of travelling is coming home. Coming home to a place that hasn’t seemed to really change since you left. To streets and buildings that you’re all too familiar with but at the same time so lost in. To routines and ways of life that you couldn’t imagine your life without a year ago, but now makes you cringe. To family and friends that you know you love with all your heart. But also to those same family and friends that you can’t seem to totally sync up with the way you did a year ago and treat you as if nothing has changed this past year.

But a lot has changed. You have. And maybe they have too. But as much as you try to scream it, no one else feels the struggle you feel. They don’t feel what it’s like to feel so different but come home to a place that’s still the same (or at least feels it). How do you get on the same page again with best friends when you are chapters and chapters apart? When you avoid certain topics because you know your stances on it no longer sync up. How do you get people to see you for the new you and not the you that left a few months ago (or 13 months ago in my case)? How do you find those highs you felt while travelling back home? How do you bring that energy you found abroad back to a place where you felt so stagnant?

You want to constantly talk about your travels, the people you met, the places you saw, and the person you grew into. Everything reminds you of a moment from your travels. But you can see the glaze washing over your friends’ eyes. It seems like you can’t connect with them anymore. This is exactly how I felt when I came home two summers ago from Seville. You want to scream. Because you love your friends. And because they love you too. But they have their lives, that’s carried on while you were gone. And you had yours on the other side of the world.

So instead of screaming, what do we do? We go out into the world again. Seemingly leaving behind this feeling of not fitting in and feeling like a square block trying to go into a circle hole. It’s not so much a travel bug as well all like to call it. It’s the never-ending hunger to speak that language “where others know what it’s like to leave, change, grow, experience, learn, then go home again and feel more lost in your hometown then you did in the most foreign place you visited”. It’s the never-ending hunger for more adventures, more highest of highs, more late-night conversations, more places in the world, and more positive energy that make you you. Different people and places become a part of your growth at different points in your life. You grow as a citizen of the world. You share in the love for adventure with all the beautiful souls you meet along the way. You struggle through and push each other to face the problems back home but knowingly all well that you’ll more likely cross paths again out in the world rather than on home soil.

So that’s the hardest part of travelling. It’s being the square block trying to fit into a circle hole. It’s the isolation you feel (whether self-made or not) when you land at home. It’s the misunderstanding between you and your friends. Because they love you. And you love them very much. You’re just chapters apart and until you find that rhythm again, you’ll be tempted to run away again back into the world. It’s the longing to be out in the world again with people who speak your language. The language of adventure, exploration, and pure self-growth.

But hey, maybe part of the growth is trying to not lose sight of the you that you discovered on your journey when you return home. It’s the hardest part of travelling but it’s also a time where you can learn more. Learn how to bring together two worlds that you believe to be galaxies apart. Learn how to be patient. Learn how to love and find the highs you found abroad right here at home.

Either way, we all find our own remedies. Some pack up a bag and jet off again. Some slip back into their old ways. And some, the lucky ones, find a way to stay apart of the beautiful world while finding their rhythm again back home. I love who I’ve become. But I also love my family and friends back home. I’m determined to make this work. And if it doesn’t work out, well the world isn’t going anywhere. I’ll grow a bit, learn who my true friends are, and set off again. Thank you to every person who was a part of this adventure! It’s been quite the ride. Adventure is out there!