I took a trip. A long one. One very far away from everyone I know, everything I know, and everything I love. I have tried to explain the many facets of why I took this trip and I cannot do it in complete honesty for a multitude of reasons. Mostly, I wish to avoid hurting others, and there are several involved. It does not bother me to hold information close to my heart nor for others to not wholly understand me, my life, or why I do what I do. If I failed to acknowledge this in any capacity before my adventure, I certainly want to make the time now. I do not care if you understand, judge, or ridicule me…eat your heart out, I certainly did. 

While I was on my trip, I cried several times a day, every day throughout my 14-day adventure, and I grew more from it. I asked for help from strangers and found comfort in things I took for granted beforehand. I was able to reinforce how important the things I place value on in my life really and truly are. And that they hold the same value, no matter where I am. My natural skills came in handy and transcended language barriers, and my faults shined brighter bringing humbleness to the surface of my existence, radiating for everyone to see in my blushed cheeks. I surprisingly struggled to miss home and later to say goodbye to a place that welcomed me spiritually without even asking for permission. I walked miles a day, sometimes with strangers. Strangers I easily judged due to not being able to use my usual assessments, and I quickly learned it was a mistake and should remember this. I slowed down my thoughts, anxiety, and urgency for answers. I felt myself and got more in touch with who I am, and not who I am to others, nor who I want to be for them. I could hear my thoughts and feel my soul. I said yes, and I learned to say no. I chose me.  

During my time away, I spent my nights sleeping with the doors and windows open, entirely naked and free. I drank water like it was wine and wine with the company of people who made it feel as pure as water. I ate clean and when I wanted. I surrendered to my appetite and squashed all negative thoughts my brain would spout out when I held pastries to my lips. I had dairy, gluten, sugar, and new spices. I fell in love with food. I fell in love with how my body felt concerning it. I never once stood in front of the mirror and measured my thigh or jiggled my arm fat saying come on Britt, what the fuck are you thinking!? I fell in love with the company I shared as I ate alone, my own. I watched table after table every meal with a fresh set of eyes and new understanding and appreciation. Tables joined me, families welcomed me to theirs, and I spent hours exchanging answers and questions. I would walk into a shop and end up leaving hours later after the owner would pull a chair out and ask me to stay for a while even when I had powdered sugar all over my face and asked to purchase rocks that were not for sale but rather just a part of the decor. I came home with a few! I had nowhere to go, and nowhere to be, and yet I learned how to indulge in my expiring time by simply doing what felt right in the moment. The sand was slipping into the lower half of the hourglass, and I made sure I felt every grain as it passed. 

On some days I spent hours driving through the countryside and mountains alone. I would put my coat, scarf, and beanie on, open the sunroof, roll down the windows, and lose myself on roads made in heaven. Sometimes I would pull over and cry, sometimes I would pull over to attempt to capture what I was seeing, sometimes I would turn on a freeing song and scream it out the sunroof while pastry crumbs fell down my chest, and the sun lit my face on fire with a smile I could not erase. I stopped at random places and took over thirty minutes to figure out what kind of gas my car required, how to use the pump, how to pay, and successfully navigate purchasing the dried sausage inside of the store from the cashier who did not speak English and wondered what the fuck someone who did was where I was buying sausage and doing donuts in a station wagon in the parking lot. I was free and sincerely happy, and I never felt I had to explain to anyone or Google Translate what it meant to me. I finished researching what kind of gas my car required (on a constant prayer for my patchy cell phone service to work), what it is called in Europe, laughed with my windows rolled down when people saw me move from pump to pump (struggling to get the car into reverse almost every time), and finally celebrated by closing my eyes and devouring a link of dried sausage from an animal the cashier and I finally cleared up by snorting like a pig and then laughing about how we learned to communicate with one another…sounds.

I almost always had a tear in my eye and a smile I could not contain. People knew who I was and what was happening within me because it was coming out of every pore of my body. I was a human letting go and finding pieces of myself each time I trusted the process more. I was collecting pieces of myself I have spent years giving away to others who would never cherish them the way they deserve to be. Each piece I found I held close to my chest and inevitably a feather from my coat would spring out of nowhere and adorn it. Though never was the light dimmed on my gatherings, and I shared their light with everyone and everything I came across. I proudly held my head high, fed my body whatever it wanted, and walked around so tall and free with the overflowing gatherings of me draped in my arms and across my chest. With each step I took, I knew I would never allow them to be scattered again. I took time to tie each of them to my soul and promised myself I would never concern myself with someone’s situation so much that I would forget my own. 

Just as I began to make peace with the tangible heaviness that hung in the air in some of the places I visited, it began to clear. People started telling me they wanted to hug. I was greeted with smiles. Laughing became normal. Barstools got squished together. Numbers exchanged. Lifelong friendships were made. The heavy clouds lifted, and I was able to see that your people are your people, and they exist in every corner of this world. Our cultures are different, our ways of life, and our norms, but still we are the same. And I was the same there as I am here, just with a little more clarity in some areas and a shit ton more in others. I am me. In some homes, I am not welcomed, in others I am the dinner topic. Some homes joyously await my visits and there are others where there is no break from laughter when I lounge around and spend equal time listening and talking. I am liked and disliked. For the first time (to my knowledge) I was disliked for simply being an American and also loved for always chewing gum and having so much childlike energy. I recognized myself the same as I always do, I only noticed a little more how others can see me in return as well without needing to say a word, at least words they could understand.   

I saw myself from a distance and was able to see the kind of love I accept and create. Some people say we are supposed to forgive and forget. I always forgive, I never forget. My memory is terrifying and convenient for you until it is not. I sometimes will allow you to tell me my memory does not serve me, but usually, you will find me holding my ground and quoting you verbatim as well as what the environment was surrounding us in the moment. I do not live in the past, but if you are in my present, our past certainly stays with us until I feel so in love with the moment and with you that I begin to forget memories one by one. That takes a lot of love, a lot of safety, a lot of trust, and a lot of words being proven with action creating a fortress of security. Security I require to unravel and open myself into being one’s partner in any sense, in any crime. I have been in a multitude of roles in relationships. I noticed throughout my time alone, facing stark realities over long flights where I could tangibly feel my heart aching and strings inside snapping as they were unable to withstand the necessary ascend, that I have never been loved the way I want to be loved, nor loved the way I want to love, and this is my fault.

To me, each love story is blanketed with a private coat of sin and lies. Individuality always wins and exposes its victory to me. Perhaps I become the coat, maybe I always was. Perhaps this is why sleeping with the balcony doors and windows open naked was the most freeing part of it all for me. I was on a bed of down and it was all under me. I was the experienced beautiful woman, humbled, bright-eyed, questioning and learning, and free. My belly was full of everything it had been told no to by me, my ears full of conversations with words I had no understanding of, my mind with no suffocating barriers, my entire being having affirmation that each hug is important and an intense opportunity to exchange energy and purpose. I went to bed on low bed frames, white sheets, white down comforters folded so peculiarly yet the same at every place, large square flat down pillows, and a town that understood and respected the need for silence and peace nearly at the same time every evening (except for the donkey who cried out early every morning and served as my gifted alarm). I realized that despite once being told I had nothing to offer in a relationship other than sex and denying it to be true but adversely being able to look down this vision tunnel into my past and believing it myself, I have an entire mind and intense way of seeing the world, people, and everything in it. I see through colors and feelings and I spend my life nurturing it all in return. I have everything to offer when the colors are right, and I am a terrible person when it is grey. 

I have never had a clear vision of who I am in the human sense, but always understood myself spiritually. There are people who this resonates with, others who will never understand this, and some who can feel this without knowing why or relating, and I love them all the same. I just am not able to give them the same. We all live our lives (hopefully) honestly and how it feels best for ourselves. After all, it is our life, no one else will feel the consequences of living a life you carried out by misunderstanding yourself. I have had my name and job title on a business card, a place to contact me for professional reasons and it never meant a thing to me. I do realize to others this can and does mean everything. That my free spirit and zest for life are seen as lost and a result of childhood trauma. That my lack of worrying is a sign of immaturity and spoiled nature. That my dreams and the passion in my core to consume the world and everyone in it are of fantasy. And again, all of these things are true, they are true to those who freely are allowed to think and feel this way. I have only found that the more I am open to who I am, the more the world and the people in it are open to me as well. I find my way in my own way and in my own time.

When I looked back and down the vision tunnel of my life and relationships and began to see the roles I have played and that others played for me, genuinely I realized how many apologies I owed to these people, and also to myself. I am not young, yet I am not old. I am learning more about myself and who I am. On my adventure, I went to the top of a mountain, sat down with a bird, and cried as I started to wrap my head around the realization that I have not been searching for love, I have been searching for room for me. Room that allows space for others who love me in this room, who love me in this space. I have love, I always have, and I have so much love to give in return. I have been my obstacle, I have been an obstacle to others as well. When I listen to myself and trust that removing people from my life is an ok thing to do, I start making room for others who naturally will stay forever, and more space for those who never need to be removed to begin with. I went on this extremely selfish solo trip. I made so much room for myself…and in return, I was gifted with finding more of my people, and the certainty of who already was, with an endless canvas of the woman I am constantly evolving into and becoming. A canvas to be painted with everything I do not know.