The Pleasure and Pain of Travel: Always Holding On, Always Letting Go

I know I am young - a few weeks shy of twenty-two - and I have not experienced nearly enough of the world. I've only ever been to three countries and I haven't even graduated college yet. But I still have my fair share of valuable experiences to offer me guidance and to help me continue to grow.

Something I have learned during my short time on this planet is that life is a balance of holding on and letting go. This lesson became especially close to my heart after I experienced a little bit of traveling and learned what the world looked like from the other side. Of course I had experienced the joy of cherishing a moment before, as well as the anguish of letting go. But it really wasn't until I took myself so far away from my comfort zone, acclimated myself and got comfortable, then had to leave again, that I had a deeper grasp on understanding how these feelings work - or how natural and common they actually are in so many parts of life.

Falling in love is so easy. I can fall in love with anything, really. People, places, food, television shows, boy bands, clothes, foreign languages... There is a doe-eyed, hopeless romantic hidden away deep inside of my heart, and she loves to love. Over time, as is the case with many people, the romantic inside of me has learned some tough lessons from her own experiences with pain. But despite being immersed in agony at times, she remains eager to explore the world and all it has to offer, greeting everyone and everything she encounters with an open mind, an open heart, and a ravenous curiosity.

A few years ago, I fell in love with traveling. I had no idea what I was in for, but I know now that when it comes to not being heartbroken, I never stood a chance. I went to France for a summer to study abroad as a sophomore in college, and my life - and my heart - was changed forever. I fell in love with the abstract idea of traveling itself, as well as the country of France, the culture, the architecture, the food, and most importantly, the people. I had no idea how difficult it would be to let all of these things go when I had to come back home.

Last year, I went to Boston for half a week by myself. Nearly everyone I talked to thought it was such a terrifying idea, a single woman flying across the country alone. But I had to go. I had to know what it was like in the city where I'd never been before, but that was calling me steadily towards it. I needed to experience it for myself. My heart needed to feel what it was like. Four days came and went, and before I knew it, I was on a plane heading out of Logan Airport, just like that. Once again, I felt that familiar twinge of sorrow as I watched the tops of tall Bostonian buildings fade from view as we rose higher into the clouds.

All of these experiences and memories - all of the things I think of fondly when they cross my mind - make me so happy because I hold onto them; I do not let them go. I keep these wonderful tidbits of my life safely tucked away in my heart, filed between other sweet memories like childhood birthday parties and perfect first kisses.

I remember how it felt when that plane landed in Paris at 9:30 in the morning local time after almost 24 hours of traveling. I remember the warmth I felt when I hugged my two adorable and ornery little host sisters for the first time. I remember the fun I had together with an American friend as we drank and flirted with French boys on a Saturday night.

I remember boarding my connecting flight in Atlanta and hearing Boston accents in the rows near me, as we prepared to head northeast. I remember slurping oysters and drinking beer in the oldest restaurant in America after a morning of solo kayaking on the Charles River. I remember the blisters on my feet after a long day wandering around the big city in a sundress and taking photos of skyscrapers.

I would never willingly let any of those memories go. I cherish them. They're beautiful pieces of my life and together they help add up to me, so I clutch them tightly, very near my heart. But I have learned, after some time, that there are things in all of this mess of life that I do have to learn to let go.

Each semester, there is inevitably a new crop of international students who arrive on campus and who create unforgettable ripple effects in my life, if only for a moment. Each semester, after finals are over and celebrations have begun, the time comes when I have to say farewell to a friend I've known for four months. After seeing this person on a daily basis for so long, I have to accept that we will only be communicating over Facebook for the foreseeable future. I have to hug them and tell them to have a safe flight and try not to be sad about someone else leaving. And each semester, it never gets any easier.

These feelings wash over me when my new friends leave for other continents, mainly because of the fun we've experienced and the relationships we've shared across international borders, language barriers, and cultures. But I think these moments remind me of something else, on a deeper level; something that shaped me during such a pivotal moment in my development as a traveler: the morning I had to leave my host family in France.

It was early enough that the sun hadn't yet risen, and in France during summer, it seems rare that the sun is ever down for long. This was such a gloomy morning in comparison to the sun I had known for four weeks. I put my last few belongings away and zipped up my suitcase, carried it down the stairs, and prepared to tell two precious pieces of my heart good-bye. I remember trying in vain not to cry, and hugging my host mother tightly like the American women we are. I remember a sleepy seven-year-old, in the backseat of the car as her family prepared to leave for vacation, wagging her finger at me and very seriously telling me to "continue à apprendre le français" because my French sucked. I remember closing the door, and walking away toward the tram stop, rolling my suitcase behind me, and bawling like a baby.

I remember feeling as if some kind of monster had reached down through my throat and ripped my heart from my chest. My heart, which had just previously been smothered with love, compassion, curiosity, and wanderlust. My heart, which I thought I was keeping safely inside my rib cage, but which had somehow found its way out onto my sleeve. I had built such strong, beautiful, meaningful bonds with so many people in such a short amount of time, and now I was being forced to tell them all good-bye. It didn't seem fair. To subject a human being with such a vast emotional capacity as myself - who feels things before she thinks things - to such an emotional roller coaster ride, is simply cruel. Unless... These feelings exist for a reason, and they are there to teach me something about myself.

Historically, I've never been particularly good at letting go of things once I have become emotionally attached to them. And why would I be? I don't think it's something which is necessarily natural-feeling or innate to human beings. Moreover, it was certainly not something I was explicitly taught to do growing up in Western culture. So I knew how to hold on, how to fall in love with something or someone. But I had no idea how to get over it and let it go once this wonderful thing was gone. I didn't know how to handle the time after it was over, or what the grieving and recovery process should look like.

Boyfriends, sure. I'd loved them and lost them, and strangely enough, gone on to be better than fine without them. Best friends, yeah. I'd lost them too, and I knew I would be just as well without them. Family members and pets, I'd lost before, and I knew how to grieve then. But this was different. This was more than a person or an animal leaving me.

The notion of traveling as an abstract idea is fascinating to me, because it is so malleable and able to be customized to fit any individual's experience. No two people travel the same way, either literally through the rugged countryside or metaphorically throughout life. It is deeply personal and the traveler oftentimes learns more about themselves during their journey, than they originally set out to do. So how can something so beautiful that offers such wonderful experiences, also be the cause of such heartbreak and pain when it's over? Well, that's true with anything we love, isn't it?

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go, but you've got to not only know how to do both, but you've also got to learn when to do both. Perhaps most importantly, you've got to learn that both are equal and necessary counterparts to life and have faith in yourself that things will work out as they are meant to be. You've got to learn that letting go of the experiences and people you love is a part of life, and although it causes you pain, that is only because it first brought you so much pleasure.

The catch about being so alive and feeling so much pleasure, is that the parts of your brain and heart which feel that pleasure, can feel exactly that same amount of pain. All that your nerve receptors do is receive the message you send to them, and transmit it back with the same intensity, regardless of what the feeling is. And if so much love and euphoria can send your heart flying into the sky, that means that anything which hurts it can just as easily bring it crashing back down to the ground. It can be scary. The fact that something like intersecting lives and connecting souls around the world can affect you in such a way, and that it can influence and shape who you are as a person, means that we are vulnerable to being molded and changed at any time. But isn't that beautiful?

The first reaction to pain by many people, is to run from it. To ignore it and avoid it. To try to tough it out in hopes that it will go away. But that approach seldom works for the person experiencing it, and that's how problems go unresolved for quite some time. What if instead of running away from our pain, we ran towards it instead? What if we reach out and touch it, embrace it, hold it close and let it crack apart all the beautiful pieces of our heart and then use the fragmented voids to fill it up with a new kind of love? Get downright vulnerable with our pain. Let it wash over us and consume us, because if we do, it will heal us.

At first pain demands that we feel it - and we do. Then it sucks for a while. But eventually, if we run toward it rather than away from it, we will run so far into it that we meet ourselves. And when we come out from the other side of whatever this painful experience is, we will have changed. We will have been transformed into a different version of ourselves, and there will be no going back to the people we were before. Feeling so deeply can seem like a curse sometimes. But at other times, it provides you with a euphoria so much higher than everybody else. And that makes it all worth the pain.

I've grown so much and learned a lot about holding on and letting go during the last few years of my life. I have fallen in love with people and places and then a short time later, had to leave, every bit as in love as when I arrived. I've driven friends to the airport and hugged them good-bye, and told myself I'll see them again someday. My life has been touched by so many people, places, and experiences, and there's no doubt it is all the richer for it. But that's exactly why it's so hard to let go.

As a traveler, nobody prepared me for the moment when I'd have to say good-bye and return home. As a person, nobody prepared me for how to handle loving so many people in so many places at once. I don't have a solution as to how to let go, because I'm honestly just not very good at it yet. But I know life requires balance, so that must mean that I have to let go in the same capacity and intensity with which I try to hold on.

The people I love will still be there the next time plane tickets go on sale. The places I long to explore are not going anywhere, either. Maybe in the future, I can go visit my international classmates on their soil, rather than waiting for them to return to America. There are so many options for letting go.

Once your heart has made a connection to traveling, once you understand how liberating and beautiful it is, then you begin to understand why it's necessary to let go. By its very nature, traveling is a transient act. You move. You go. You leave. And while that certainly means something incredible is waiting to be seen ahead, it also means you're leaving something else behind. The beauty is found in the act of leaving, of letting go and letting be.

Travelers who master this art have simply opened their hearts so wide, that it has shattered time and again from the pain of leaving love behind. But they understand that anything which is beautiful is also oftentimes shrouded in pain. They open their hearts to feel all of the wonderful things about exploring new lands and new people. But in so doing, they make themselves vulnerable to feeling all the torture and anguish that comes with it, too. And in turn, that shapes and molds the person they are, just as any experience with love does. That's how we know we're alive. One of the most beautiful things about the human experience is that we can feel a full range of emotions from touching the lives of others, and having them touch ours; whether that happens when we are holding on, or when we have to let go.

The Battle Between My Brain & My Heart

Boys. I love them and I hate them. Not in a feminist ideology, equality-of-the-sexes way. In a "I've loved them and hated them since middle school for all the joy and pain they've brought me" way.

A handful of them have left marks on my life at different times, and undoubtedly, this has changed who I am as well as how I go about living my life afterward. I love it at the time; the excitement and the schoolgirl squeals and the butterflies in my tummy and all that jazz. But god, looking back at it, I can't help but roll my eyes and laugh. Why? Because I'm a cynic or a pessimist? No, I don't think so.

More likely it is because every time I have started with those squeals and that excitement, I have immediately imagined this perfect fantasy in my head, and once my heart is on-board with it, I am doomed. Doomed, because the actual relationship in reality has no chance of ever living up to the scenario in my head. So I laugh and roll my eyes afterward, because not a single one of those boys, just as young and inexperienced as me, had a prayer for giving me the perfection I didn't even realize I wanted.

One of the mind's favorite games to play is thinking without ever having the intention of acting. My brain loves to sit idly and fantasize about an imaginary future where everything is easy and things go perfectly according to plan. I like to dream up alternate universes where boys do exactly what I want them to do, and I have all the time and money in the world to make everything perfect. But I am a smart girl, and I know in reality, that's not how any of this works. Real life is not a Taylor Swift song. Time and money do not facilitate a perfect relationship. Manipulating others into doing what you want them to do, does not cultivate love and respect. It would be so easy if that's how things worked, but unfortunately it would not be even half as rewarding.

I have felt the highs and exciting squeals, and soon thereafter, the lows and the disappointed eye-rolls. I have played it cool and I have internally freaked out. I have played along in the game, just as I have been taught to do, and it worked out pretty well for me at first. But then my brain caught up to my heart and it metaphorically bitch-slapped it back into reality where it belongs. What am I thinking? What am I doing? This stuff is exhausting.

I am at odds with myself, and I have been for what often feels like forever; because my heart is busy painting big pictures and dancing around in the same euphoria it always demands, while my brain is scrambling to keep up as it files these grand ideals away neatly in their proper, alphabetized, places. I have always been a dreamer with a big imagination and enough ideas to never worry about coming back down to earth. That's why it has always been a less-than-graceful face-plant when I do come crashing down. I haven't ever really been bothered with the necessary planning that is required to build the steps on which I climb so high in the first place. But the existence of those steps is crucial for when the clouds of joy and excitement eventually fade away and I need something solid on which to support myself until my imagination can take off again.

I have always, for as long as I can remember, relished my individuality. I enjoyed alone time long before I ever enjoyed time spent with boys. My solitude means so much to me, that no obscene amount of money could ever compete. That's why I hate that I ever let a boy change that about me. There have been times in my life -- multiple in fact -- when I have felt myself lost, consumed almost entirely by someone else's being. Almost completely gone, I don't know if I would have been able to recognize who I am today in a mirror. It was a nightmare for someone like me, whose independent spirit demands to be recognized. I wondered how I ever allowed myself to get to that awful place. It is paramount that my individuality, my independence, remain untouched and intact, throughout every relationship with anyone that I ever have. I have known the feeling of losing myself in someone else before, and that is exactly why I now understand the importance of finding myself and never letting go again.

But it is so tough sometimes, when my dreamer's heart takes hold. It's like a kite caught by a strong northern wind, and all I can do is clutch helplessly onto the handle at the end of the string, holding on and being dragged along wherever it takes me until the wind dies down and all is calm again. My childlike heart does not care about the times it has been hurt before; it does not count the stitches in it or the scars it has collected over time. My heart has amnesia when it comes to the bruises and contusions it has suffered from all the times when I have lost myself in another. All it knows is, cute boy + possibility = grand illusions. My heart never paid attention to anything past this in math class.

My brain, on the other hand, gets it. My brain loves my independence more than almost everything else. Once the alcohol from the night before has worn off and the sunlight is streaming in through my window, my brain is awake and fully alert, demanding answers from my heart as if it is the main murder suspect sitting in an interrogation room. "What were you thinking? What were you doing? Didn't you learn anything from last time?" My brain is hesitant about making big commitments now, after what they have done to it in the past.  It understands that commitment to another person comes with the possibility of sacrificing a part of the whole person I already am. And my brain won't stand for such a betrayal of self anymore.

These two quarrel back and forth time and again, garnering experience and wisdom very slowly over time. My heart, throwing all caution to the wind and ordering just one more drink at the end of the night; and my brain chasing my heart frantically around, wagging its finger in its face like a disapproving mother. When will I learn?

I guess I will learn when I am ready to sacrifice a piece of my individuality for a piece of someone else, again. Out of unsolicited desire, rather than implied necessity. It will probably happen when the idea of taming my wild heart is no longer an option at all. Likely when someone else comes along and scoffs at the idea with the same disdain as I do. Someone who is appalled at the mere notion of me ever reigning my heartfelt ideals into the boxed-in framework of logic. I will finally know better when my brain draws a blank because my heart has already found the answers it seeks reflected in that of another.

But who knows when that day will be? Who knows what I will have to go through and experience in order to prepare myself for that opportunity? I sure as hell don't. So until that day arrives and hits me in the face like a ton of bricks, I guess I can just keep on dreamin', doing all the things that make me wonderfully myself. I can keep wearing my heart on my sleeve and gaining glorious experiences and having my hopes shattered time and again. Because really, it all adds up to the net sum of myself in the end, anyway. And none of it is so bad that it cannot eventually be overcome. I've got twenty-one-and-a-half years of empirical proof of that.

I'm not ready just yet to give up any part of myself or my freedom just because I like someone else. Yeah, I may like them, but I love myself more. This is something I have learned through experience over the years. And the way I see it, if someone is stupid enough to ask me to like them more than I like myself, well... they're just not a good fit for me. The day my brain draws a blank and doesn't know what to tell my heart to do, will be the day when someone comes along and tells me, "Don't you dare change any part of who you are for me. I love you for you, not for being a reflection of me." My brain will be perplexed by such an idea, and it won't have a file to reference. But my heart will finally understand.

What Happened When I Followed My Heart

I have spent a lot of my life doing what other people want me to do. I have spent so much time adhering to the expectations placed before me, the loose guidelines of what any number of things is supposed to look like: success, happiness, inner peace, a good role model, a worthy scholarship recipient... Without even realizing it, my life has been plagued with these ideas of what I am supposed to be and the things I am supposed to attain.

Now, I realize my life is much easier than that of a lot of people. I do not discount that fact, nor take it for granted. However, I am able to clearly notice the small, yet meaningful, differences in my own consciousness when I am doing something for someone else as opposed to when I am doing it for myself.

Some people -- okay, a lot of people -- would say I have a bad attitude. They would say I am negative, pessimistic, and always complaining about something. It's true. Other people -- fewer people -- would say that I have a positive attitude, compassion, wonderful insight, and plenty of big ideas to offer this world. For the longest time, I was conflicted by those two opposing opinions of who I am. How on earth can one person be perceived in such polarizing ways by others?

Then I paused for a moment to examine what it was these people saw in me. I stepped out of my shoes and into theirs and I tried to imagine myself through their eyes. If I were to ask these people what it is I am always so unhappy about, what would they say? I can create a list of my most common complaints from my own memory: being stared at by strangers, inconsiderate co-workers, lazy classmates, being talked down to, and having too much homework. All in all, not unreasonable irritations.

All right, but what about the other people who would say I am a hopeful beacon of light for the future? If they were asked what it is that makes me so great, what would they say? The compliments I receive most often include: being mature and professional for my age, being intelligent, giving solid advice, being inclusive, and being able to see things from another perspective.

Now, perhaps the most important question: who are these people? Who are the people in my life that seem to think I am nothing more than a Negative Nancy? Conversely, who are the people who see the raw material I'm working with and encourage me to mold it into something more? What positions do all of these people hold in my life and why do I even listen to them, anyway?

This is when I understood the reason why I was so disappointed by trying to live up to the expectations of others. Each individual person expects something entirely different from me. By worrying so much about having good relationships with so many different people in my life, I neglected to have a good relationship with myself.

The people who have made me feel badly for being "too negative" are greater in quantity, but noticeably less in quality. They are acquaintances, co-workers, classmates, and even strangers I encounter in passing, who know only the surface of my life. They comment on what little behavior they witness from me, and they honest-to-goodness believe they have me all figured out: I complain too much and I'm so unhappy and I am always angry or in a bad mood. (Do you know what actually makes me unhappy? Feeling the need to defend my happiness against people who barely took any time at all to know me before judging me.)

On the other hand, when I think of the times I have had awe-inspiring, hopeful, optimistic conversations about the future, I think of an entirely different caliber of human being. I think of teachers, mentors, parental figures, and even a few very close friends. These are the people with whom I have discussed my worries about today and my plans for tomorrow. They are the ones who have taken the time and interest to more closely observe some of the things that make me tick; they're people who have read what I wrote or heard what I said and understood with a single look into my heart and mind that I had it (whatever it is), and then pushed me to be more.

Because of all the ambivalence I felt from such opposing forces, I was unsure for a while even who I was. Was I this mean, hateful person that so many people painted a picture of? Was I an insightful, wise-beyond-her-years, eclectic individual with something deep within her soul that stirred the interest of kindred spirits? Or did I fall somewhere in the middle and fluctuate slightly between good and bad days? I didn't really know for sure, and it resulted in a miniature identity crisis for me, at the age of 21. (Which, granted, is a better age for a crisis than 45, when I'd probably have many more long-term commitments.) So many people wanted me to be so many different things. But what did I want myself to be? Through all this struggling, I was able to find some answers by myself.

You see, I was so preoccupied with worrying about these two very different perceptions of my personality, that I forgot to take into account one very important opinion on the matter: my own. I became so worried about why I might seem bitter and cold to a mere acquaintance, or if I were falling short of the exemplary mark set for me by a mentor, that I failed to leave enough time and energy for me to examine how my personality was measuring up to qualities that I valued.

I can't pinpoint an exact moment when it happened, and I can't even tell you the exact sequence of events that led up to it, but there was a moment in time when I just quit. I didn't quit listening, I didn't quit trying, and I didn't quit caring about the people in my life. What I did quit, was concerning myself so much with the validity of others' opinions. I quit caring more about how they perceived me than about how I perceived myself.

In that moment, I stood up for myself. I realized that what was in my heart was the only thing with any true consistency -- the only thing that really mattered -- and I decided I would give following that a chance, instead. It occurred to me that I was always going to let someone down if I kept trying to please so many different audiences, so I might as well try to please the one audience I knew best: me.

I didn't know where else to start, so I just asked myself, "what do you want, Alyssa?" My heart answered, and I made sure to listen closely. It spoke softly to me about all of the glorious, adventurous, beautiful things it wanted to see and feel. After it was finished whispering many splendored things to me, I started with the smallest, easiest item on the list: writing.

I had procrastinated accomplishing anything at all with my writing for months, and I had made excuses for myself about how busy I was with my life. I let other things (albeit credible things like class, work, and family) dictate my actions. I did not make time for what my heart really needed. I had not been listening to my own desires, and I had suffered because of it. But that was about to change.

I sat down one afternoon, and I wrote. I applied to publication after publication, and I sent several different samples of my work into numerous websites which I had previously scouted. And when I was finished, I felt so good about myself. I felt accomplished, like I had just crossed something very heavy off of my heart's to-do list... finally.

A few short days later, when I began to receive email responses with positive answers from those publications, I was absolutely elated. My heart was so happy and I felt so pleased with myself, because I knew that I had made this happen. I was the one who had done the hard work which earned me this reward. Because I chose to finally listen to myself and value my own opinion above others, I took action toward my dreams and I had now reaped the fruit of my labor. I did it all by myself and I was beyond proud.

This is what happens when you follow your heart. It applies to every area of your life: personal, professional, academic, and even athletic. When you act based on your own heart's wishes, you will be happy with the results. As soon as I stopped allowing the perceptions of others to set boundaries and expectations for me, I opened myself up to endless possibilities for joy with a horizon limited only by my own imagination. I reminded myself that I don't have to impress anyone else, fans or critics alike. I always took for granted that I knew this before, but society has a nasty way of creeping up on you and ingraining things into your mind before you are even aware it's taking place.

I think that's what happened to me. I spent so much time listening to so many mixed messages from everyone else, that I lost myself among the noise. The only thing louder than all that racket was the consistent, steady beating of my own heart. I chose to focus on it, and soon its reverberation rose above all the external static, until eventually it was the only sound I could hear.

Friend or foe, the opinions of others are irrelevant to your existence. You are the only one living your life; and ultimately, you are the only one affected by the decisions you make. So save yourself some stress and follow the instructions written on your heart. They are the words that will lead you exactly to the place where you are most happy. They have always been there, and that's where they will remain, for you to fall back on when the commotion of everyone else becomes too loud.