Chasing Amy-Lou

It’s been approximately 140 days since I returned from my travels. And it’s been approximately 135 days since I last blogged about anything of significance in my tumultuous nomadic lifestyle. And in those 135 days, despite not travelling more than a few 100 miles from my front door, a lot has happened.

I’ve returned home and started a new college course; I’ve left friends behind; I’ve had to contend with shitty British weather and being content with the fact that the sky ‘up north’ is never anything but grey; I’ve left love and had my heart broken into a million tiny pieces; I’ve reconnected with friends; I’ve written a lot; I’ve networked, and, I’ve found love again.

However, the last four and a half months have passed so quickly and I’ve been so busy settling back into life in supposed post-Brexit Britain and embarking on that next stage of my career/life/journey (insert cliched metaphor here) that I’ve not had the chance to write down my own feelings or evaluate anything; in fact, I’ve not had much chance to even think about evaluating anything; apart from now.

Many people have said to me, “Well, now the travelling is over Amy, it’s time to get back to reality; its about time you settled back into the real world, isn’t it?” But that’s just it, the phrases, ‘back to reality’, and, ‘back to the real world’ just don’t sit right with me. And they never will. For the thirteen months I spent travelling and living in Australia, that was my reality. That was my real world.

I had work in Australia, I had friends in Australia, I fell in love in Australia, and I had a life in Australia. The reality of my life over there was no less real than what it is or could be over here, or what it should be now. For thirteen months, Australia was my reality. And coming back home, leaving that life behind; like I said when I returned from my first twelve month stint in 2015 – it’s been bloody hard.

Sometimes I feel as if that whole year was a dream. Sometimes I pinch myself to make sure I know it happened. And sometimes, with a sad heart, I think back and wish I could reach for those memories and wave a magic wand to make them real again. Never do I want to forget or dismiss the experiences I had. For me, they weren’t dreams come true, I wasn’t negating reality; they were ideas and plans that I’d made happen, just like any other part of every day life – like walking for a bus or popping round to my dad’s for dinner. And they were real. The people were real and the feelings were real. It was my reality.

Travelling, contrary to what a lot of people may think, isn’t a way of escaping reality. Travelling is a reality. And it’s something that should be looked upon as just that. You travel to find a new reality, and sometimes that’s all you need to get by in this life. I will always want to travel. It’s something that will be a passion of mine forever. Travelling is like a drug to me. I crave the need to see new places and experience new cultures, and to talk about free-spirited ideologies – it’s what I call living; after all, what is the point to life if you can’t live it?

Living as I did in Australia might not be possible for me again; travelling extensively for more than a month may not be on the agenda right now. But I’ll always continue to explore the world, and in the same vain I’ll continue to explore my world too – my likes, my interests, my inquisitions.

This last week has been an emotional one for me. And it’s perhaps why I decided to put pen to paper again (or fingers to keyboard should I say). In the space of four days, I reconnected with old friends, I met up with dear, dear friends from Australia, and most of all, I let go of love.

Sometimes, when returning from travelling, the hardest thing to do is let go. It’s not the letting go of memories and experiences and friends; because they will always be with you; it’s the letting go of love; of the deeper connections that remain engrained in your emotions. And letting go of something you know could never have been, is the most difficult thing in the world.

In choosing to let go though, I have opened myself up to other options, to more wonderful, possible and exciting realities, and despite my studies taking up a huge amount of my time, despite me striving for a career I hope will take me places, I have made a promise to myself to always continue to travel.

Therefore, it was today, in the first week of 2018 that I travelled to Edinburgh for the first time in four years. I met a friend I lived with in Australia. We reminisced. We went sightseeing. We chatted. But most of all, we kept our friendship alive; we talked about our reality. And by doing things like that, the purpose of travel, for me, will always be real.

I wrote a motto once, in a blog post way back when; it wasn’t something I’d read and it wasn’t something contrived, and it certainly wasn’t something I stole. It was something that was truly mine.

My motto goes – Travelling soothes the soul; forever shall I wander, free and in love with the world.

And this, no matter what, is something I shall continue to do.