I’m doing everything in my power to not push the Purchase button. A one-way flight to Hong Kong in January 2019 for $345. My dream. Or is it my escape? My escape out of here. My escape from this feeling. I’m fighting the urge to buy this flight because deep down I know in this exact moment, I’m traveling to run away. To run away from the anxiety-induced pain in my chest. To run away from not being good enough for any of my dream jobs. To run away from the social pressures of actually being in a community for once in my life. To run away from what an open relationship really, truly entails and my fear of losing someone I love. To run away from not enoughness.

Looking back, living in Spain made traveling on the weekends easy. The flights were cheap, the countries were close. So easy that I could book a flight the week of and be on my way out Thursday evening. So easy that I didn’t realize how much money I’d spent on flights by the end of my year abroad. The solo canyoning trips in Italy, the Christmas market hopping in England, the thermal baths in Hungary, these were incredible experiences. Ones I wouldn’t trade. But what led me to some of these places, well sometimes that was a whole other story. One rooted in my belief that my worth was determined by my partner, that my language skills defined my intelligence, that my “home” wasn’t really ever going to be mine.

So I would pack a bag nearly every weekend and travel. Travel to run away. To run away from the fear that I so debilitatingly relied on another human being, that I found my self-worth in someone else. To run away from my inability to lean into the language and allow myself to mess up along the way. To run away in search of home somewhere else in the world.

I had some incredible experiences. I saw some beautiful places. I ate some incredibly weird foods. And I had the time of my life. As soon as I dropped into wherever I had headed to that weekend, I felt at ease. At ease that my biggest worry was losing my way, not my worth. Thoughts of am I good enough were replaced with is this safe to eat. Novelty replaced routine. And once I was out of routine, I felt free.

But strip away the novelty of it all, the excitement of new experiences, and the jitters of navigating a foreign place and I’m left with the real, deep, painful reason of why I was there in the first place. Because I felt alone in my world. Because my fears, worries, and doubts got the best of me. And my solution was not to face them head on but to run away. To take the easy (yet expensive) way out.

So this piece is just a simple reminder. A simple reminder to sleep on it. To not so impulsively buy that flight out of here. To give yourself space to breath. To sit down and list out every possible reason why you want to travel right now, the ones you’ve voiced out loud and the ones you haven’t. The ones you haven’t will be your tell.

When people ask me why I travel, I tell them “Because I am my best self when I travel.” And it’s true. But it’s not the whole truth. It’s okay to admit we travel to run away. It’s okay if it feels like that’s our only solution. But that’s just it, it’s just a feeling. In a moment of panic, that feeling sometimes can be overwhelming and all-consuming. I know the feeling all too well. The suffocating feeling where you’re grasping on to whatever you can to stay afloat. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

We owe it to ourselves to see the world. But we also owe it to ourselves to face our demons, not run away from them whenever we get the chance. To grow in difficult situations and find ourselves in ourselves, not out in the world, not in other people.

I went on weekend trips when I lived in Spain to run away from the constant self-doubt. I moved to Kenya because of a heartbreak. I flew to New York last week because I was feeling too comfortable in community here, something I’ve never had before. But this next time will be different. I vow to travel to wherever is calling me not because I want to run away.

There’s running away and there’s running towards, the difference is home.

To me, home is the places in the world we are comfortable taking up space. The feeling of belongingness even when surrounded by strangers. And the understanding that we are not defined by our roots, but rather by the flowers that grow out of them.

Home can be found anywhere in the world because it starts inside of you. When we love ourselves enough, when we allow ourselves to take up space, when we truly believe that we are enough, that’s when we can begin to make a home for ourselves anywhere in the world.

So this next trip, whenever and wherever I go, will be to grow my home. To be the best version of myself and to find myself, not in other people, but in myself.