Freedom makes you feel light. But coming back always shows you who you’ve become. After every trip, I feel like a new person. Like the past version of myself was less scared of things.
From a very young age, I was always scared. Afraid to say what I liked, what I thought, who I really was. When we got an assignment in school to write about ourselves, I never wrote about myself. I invented characters who liked Harry Potter, listened to mainstream music, and were fans of everything people expected. I was never that girl.
I had my own path. I was just too scared to show it to others. I knew they’d make fun of me, or worse, judge me for being different.
I tried to step out and show the real me. They laughed. Then ended up doing exactly what I was doing.
Sometimes I wonder whether I travel too much. This year I’ve been in a different country every month, on top of school and work. I’m always somewhere. I don’t plan it. It just finds me.
Suddenly, I’m catching another flight. Another month. Another country. Another story.
And when I’m traveling, I feel like someone else. More open. More curious. Like I’m finally allowed to just be me.
I pay attention. I watch the way people live, how they speak, how they sit still.
But when I come home, and I don’t fit the version of myself they remember, especially when I return to my hometown. I feel like a stranger.
They don’t see the girl who sat by the river in Berlin, talking with a stranger about heartbreak. Or the one who lived one month in Italy, riding motorbikes and vintage cars. The one who flew across Europe with ten strangers she had never met and trusted the unknown more than anything familiar.
Honestly? There are so many more stories than that.
They still see the same girl who left for university two years ago. They don’t see the choices. The loneliness. The nights that shifted everything. The version of myself I outgrew on the back of motorbikes, in airport terminals, or unfamiliar cities.
I’ve stopped explaining. Because what’s the point in trying to be understood by people who are still talking to your past?
Maybe not everyone is meant to see the change. But you feel it. And that’s what matters.
Every time I come back, I feel less afraid.
Less hidden.
Less like the girl who ha to lie about what she loved just to feel safe.
And that’s the real growth. Not loud. Not dramatic. Not explained. Just quiet bravery. Showing up for yourself over and over again. Until you’re finally living as the version of you who doesn’t need to lie to be loved.