Dramas of a traveler in 2020

11th March of 2020. The day I completed 33 laps around the sun and the day a world pandemic was decreed. It was also the day that I, and I believe that we all, felt in our skin that we have no control over anything. One day everything is beautiful and the next day you are free-falling into the abyss.

If my grandmother, who at the peak of her 87 years of life, has never experienced anything like this, imagine me in the innocence of my 33 years of life.

In the innocence of my 33 years of life, I believed that “this goes by quickly and in May I am already in the Philippines”, in the innocence of my 33 years of life I believed that “after the summertime things will be calmer and I will be able to get my life back to normal out of here”, in the maturity of my 33 years of life I realized that “I’m not going to be anywhere anytime soon and I have to learn to live with it”.

Pandemic -1 | Maria – 0

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE SOMEONE’s PAIN

I always thought that my greatest quality was to always see the good side of things and never lose a certain innocence in living life, but this time I found myself seeing no hope anywhere. I know, there are always worse things, but each person knows the pains, fears and insecurities that carries within themselfs and all the pain is valid and needs to be honored by those who live it.

We honor a feeling when we allow ourselves to feel it. It’s difficult to feel pain, hurt, anxiety. However, I learned to welcome these feelings when they appear, to feel them completely pass through every cell in my body and then let them go.

LESSON NUMBER 1 – Never underestimate someone’s pain. Especially yours.

In 2020 I realized what it’s like to have an identity crisis. It took me a while to realize that this was what was happening to me, to give it a name.

Identity crisis.

In the last few years, I got into the habit of when shadows appear to me to face them. Thus, in the midst of my insecurities and anxiety, I tried to ask myself why I am feeling so lost, what was this feeling of not being able to fit in with life and what emptiness was this that opened up in me.

I found myself asking this:

“Who am I when I can’t do what characterizes me? Who am I when I’m not on the road or living in another country? Who am I when life becomes routine?”

I confess that I still don’t know the answer, at least one with enough coherence so that I can share it. However, I continue to learn and discover more about myself, the journey never ends.

 

THERE ARE ATTACHMENTS THAT WE DO NOT WANT TO DETACH

It’s funny the way life shows us things. I consider myself so detached and then I realized the attachment I have to be a traveler or to the lifestyle I built.

The truth is that I know that everything passes, and eventually, this will pass and I will be able to let myself be consumed by the world again. My suffering I know where it comes from, it comes from my reluctance to stop. Life asks me to stop but I don’t want to.

It’s easy to say to flow with life when it flows in the direction we want, and how do we do when we have to flow with life but it’isnt as exciting as we learned to live it?

LESSON NUMBER 2 – Stop. Rest. Recover.

Sometimes the best we can do is accept what we cannot change and from a place of peace find new solutions and new answers. This place of peace is our center, so when you begin to see no hope anywhere, I believe that the best thing to do is to stop everything and silence the world around you and take care of yourself, with love. Nobody better than you will know what is best for you, and all the answers are within ourselves, we just need to know how to listen to them.

As for me, I realized that this is an attachment that I don’t want to let go of. So I accept to suffer a little bit more these days and accept that for some reason I have to be here, exactly where I am and living exactly what I have to live to evolve as Being. And I try to be patient because this will also pass.

Do you know the verses of that song?

“We expect from the world and the world expects from us
a little more patience … “

 

MISSING MYSELF

I miss me.

There is a strangeness in this feeling of missing a version of me. Sometimes I wonder:

“What would Maria from Asia do in this situation?”

After a year and a half in Portugal, I admit that I lost her somewhere inside me. Our best versions don’t arise from anything. I believe that they appear when we dare to live, to live for real, you know? When we are not afraid to be who we are. When we take a risk for something that we believe even if it only makes sense to us. When we let ourselves be constantly surprised by life, and especially when we follow our heart and when we follow our dreams.

Who has ever regretted the time spent making dreams come true? I bet no one.

I may not have many answers, but this year it came to show me that my essence is definitely the road. I don’t even say the act of traveling, but rather the incessant search for what is different to me. I miss the new.

Here, everything is repeated. People, flavors, stories, reactions, routines, life, and even myself. Even myself! I realized that I am terrified of repetition, especially mine. And I try to find myself within me, however, without the unknown roads and the different cultures that question and challenge me all the time, I feel stagnant.

Between conversations, someone says that I have to conform myself and that life is like this for most people and that’s when I feel her, she answers for me:

“I will never be conformed. 2020 may be pulling my rug over and over but over and over I will get up and try again”

I prefer to cry for a thousand failed plans than to settle for a life that doesn’t make my heart beat faster.

LESSON NUMBER 3 – Don’t get lost in others.

Especially if you’re a dreamer. Never let life or someone kill your dreams. Only quitters are conformed. And the world is already full of quitters.

HI VULNERABILITY, LET’S TALK?

This thing about walking around the world by ourselves makes us a little bit individualistic, at least it did that to me. I believe that because everything around me is constantly changing and knowing that the only thing that remains with me is myself, led me to believe that in the end, I’m the only one that I can count on.

“We are born alone and we die alone”, I have probably lived this idea a little to the extreme in the last few years, since I hardly asked for help when I was in shit, preferring to get in and out of it by myself and if no one realized it even better.

Until recently, being vulnerable to me was synonymous with weakness. Today I realized how wrong I was.

This year undressed me. And in my nakedness, I found myself vulnerable and in that vulnerability, I saw myself more human than ever. The truth is that I found myself more courageous in those moments when I showed myself like that to others (and myself) than when I took my backpack and crossed the ocean by my own.

I have always found it easier to love than to let myself be loved. Being in the position to receive love has a lot to do with being vulnerable, allowing the other to see us in our insecurities and fears, and realizing that we are not perfect. However being like that is scary, at least it was and it remains for me.

However, it was in my vulnerability in front of people who love me that I found the love I needed to get up, over and over again. It was in the vulnerability of seeing myself that way that I understood this self-love thing.

LESSON NUMBER 4 – “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage are not always comfortable, but they are never weakness.” – Brené Brown

I believe that experiencing this vulnerability was only possible because this year took me to an extreme that broke me a few times, broke me in a way that I had to assume that I was not well. Me, the girl that is always well, wasn’t well.

Somehow I had to accept that. The way I found to live my “fragility” was to expose that same fragility and to allow myself to receive love. In the form of a hug, a more tender look or a more gentle smile, in the form of “it’s OK if you cry”, in the form of “it’s normal what you are feeling” and between tears and laughter shared, my pain became lighter and the world with more color.

 

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER

It took me more than a week to write this reflection because it’s really complicated for me to organize the thoughts and feelings that I am experiencing this year. Most of them had never experienced them (and I am grateful for that), so it has been a very intense process where the answers do not reach me easily.

However, I believe that it’s at challenging times that we learn and evolve the most. I believe that things do not happen by chance and that sometimes it is these times that force us to change direction and put us on the right path, whatever it may be. The important thing is not to lose hope and always be able to get up as often as necessary.

Feelings are only visitors and as good hosts, we must know how to receive them. They always arrive to show us or teach us something, and then it’s up to us to open the door to let them go. Do you want advice? Let it go, let it flow, if there is something that is not a good idea is to attach yourself to feelings.

Someone once said: “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” so I think it’s almost a case of thanking 2020, but no, I still don’t have that ability. After all, I still had to learn to deal with a broken heart. Does anyone deserve it? No, it doesn’t. But that is a history for another time.

With love,
Maria