Journaling through Europe with Gabby 🖉

"As I travel through twenty different countries over three months I grapple with the constant coexistence of indescribable joy & amazement, and profound sadness. I am visiting places like nothing I’ve ever seen before, with blue coves carved into rocks from volcanic explosions, walled fortresses and marble temples built thousands of years ago. I am in awe at the beauty of the world’s natural wonders and at the same time devastated by the obvious presence of humans who take this for granted.

I see fish swarming to eat hot pink plastic wrappers floating atop the water & animals on this overheating earth sprawling across cool rocks and wet fishing nets. I am thrilled to meet new people from different parts of the world, with different experiences and perspectives to mine. At the same time, my own experience is tainted with the thought that my mother was once young like me and once travelled like me yet I don’t know about it, and this wakes me up to the fact that this experience is mine alone and no one will know about it.

I’m thrilled to push past my fear of flying and travel the world unlike my father who has allowed this to hold him back. This realisation depresses me and reminds me that my ageing father won’t hear about this trip as we still don’t have a relationship and probably never will because how late is too late? I am at once glad to move further away from memories that hurt me palpably yet simultaneously forlorn that the people I once cared about and probably still kind of do aren’t here with me, even though I don’t want them here with me. I’m passing the time by comparing what is real and by imagining what could have been, and what might be & I float between the past and future like I go between islands.

I’m looking forward to eventually going home and at the same time I can’t accept that I won’t always be sat in this stuffy apartment, watching the setting sun over the Adriatic sea."

To travel is to know oneself, to know oneself is to travel. THANK YOU Gabby for your vulnerability. You inspire me to pack up shop and sail away. I want to be you when I grow up xx