I have been seeing my therapist for a while now, and one of things I’ve found myself saying to her, and others, more than once, is how I’d like to write about my travel experiences. This was the point of setting this blog up, after all.

When I first got to Australia, one of our housemates, Sarah, asked me about my trip so far, and I spent a good hour detailing all of my adventures up until that point, to her. She patiently listened and when I said that I would like to write a book about it all, she was very supportive of the idea and said she’d look forward to reading it. Even last year, I met another world traveller – because I was buying her book of her story. I told her a bit about my travels and she encouraged me to write. Just to write – it doesn’t have to go anywhere. But writing it out means you get it out of your system, and you always have a memory of a story to look back on, if you want to.

This is where the struggle has come in. I barely think about the amazing things I did in Asia for five months. Ever. The memory of travel has all been eclipsed by the difficulties (or, as I’ve now learnt to think of them: challenges) of Australia. The loss of a dream. A dream 15 years in the making turned out, with a few glimpses of waking up, to be a nightmare. Nothing was how it was supposed to be. How do I write about that? How do I express how I feel about the beautiful, incredible, terrible experience in a way that sufficiently explains it? I don’t think I can. I don’t think even I understand it yet. I’m still processing all of it. On some days, the horrendous situation seems idyllic. A particular time of struggle turned out to be a highlight compared to what was to come. The whole situation seems so vast to put into words. Two years of relentlessness.

But I guess I could start in small chunks, in little bits. I don’t have to write a book spanning daily experiences across two years, in one evening. I did already start the book, back in October 2020. When I was jobless and slightly depressed (although I didn’t realise it at the time) in Sydney. I think I wrote the introduction, and that was it. All the time in the world to write but no motivation to do so. I’m not really that good at working unless I have the pressure of a deadline.

So maybe turning 30 is my new deadline. Maybe by then, I would have expressed enough of Australia to let it go. I’ve been back in the UK for 10 months and 2 days now, and my experience of that country unfortunately still hangs heavy over me. I don’t talk about it because I feel ungrateful. I’m supposed to “love every second” of travelling. But Covid wasn’t easy. Farmwork wasn’t easy. People weren’t easy. Isolation wasn’t easy. Feeling lost, rudderless, replaceable, undervalued, dismissed, overlooked and stressed isn’t easy. Not in any situation. Let alone in a melting pot of Planet Earth 2020/2021/2022. I don’t want to sound like a whiner, but I guess, I have the right to express my feelings about my experiences. Don’t get me wrong – part of me adores Australia and I would go back there in a heartbeat. If only it had been… different.

And so… I guess… The story begins…