Homesickness

We floated down the coast of Portugal during the night and ended up anchored outside of Spanish Morocco this morning. There wasn’t any shore leave for the crew today, but that’s alright, because Mom and Dad went ashore when they were here last week and they said the place was a pit. It was very foggy today, and at one point they had to shut down the tender service because of the danger (for you land lubbers: when you are anchored in a port, rather than docked, it’s necessary to use little boats, called “tenders”, to cart people back and forth to the shore).

Tomorrow is Almeria, Spain. This cruise is basically the same cruise my parents were on last time, just backwards. It’s kind of a drag that they left, it was nice to have them on, especially for the ports.

I think I should explain a few things I’ve been thinking about lately. The first is homesickness, which happens even to the best traveler (don’t believe otherwise). Here’s the thing: When you are at home, and you want to be a traveler, all you want to do is get out of home. The more exotic, or foreign a place is, the better. It may take awhile, but eventually, if you really want it, you get out and start traveling.

Traveling is fantastic. There is an intense, heightened sense of awareness that comes with traveling. Everything is completely different than home, and everything is a totally sensory feast. Even brushing your teeth in a foreign country is interesting. You see new things, perhaps the people around you are speaking a different language, the dress is different, the way people walk is altered, the way people converse different, etc. You start checking off your list of places you’ve always wanted to go, places that you can brag about. You meet new friends from different cultures, and you never, ever, ever run out of interesting things to talk about regarding your collective difference in cultures. You start collecting bunches of amazing stories that no one back home will ever believe. This feeling never leaves and never changes, have no doubt.

But after awhile, a few months, a few years, another feeling sort of seeps in. At some point, you inevitably start to feel a sensory overload. Suddenly, even brushing your teeth in a foreign country starts to be a hassle. The leaves don’t change in the fall, you haven’t seen green grass in weeks, you go to the restaurant and you can only order things that have pictures because you don’t understand the language, you are always packing and moving, you never keep friends for more than a few weeks, you miss another train, you can’t find a hotel or a hostel, you get conned out of $20 – even brushing your teeth is a project!

This is when the homesickness starts in. Things are easier back home, you new where to go for food, what to order, where to sleep, what language to speak, how to brush your teeth. You start thinking about home more and more.

But here’s the catch 22 of the situation: after you’ve traveled for a long time, you are totally different when you get home. For the first few weeks or months you are elated to be back, to be back where everything is familiar and simple. But then one day you realize that everything here is just TOO simple, TOO familiar and you start to miss the foreign, the interesting, the challenging. You start to think about leaving again, to find that buzz of being in a new city, that heightened sense of awareness you get in these places.

And around and around. What do you do?

But there’s something else that I think might put a stop to it all, and that’s the second thing I want to talk about, and that’s your social life as a traveler.

If your into living this transient lifestyle, your probably an outgoing person, and you’ve probably got a lot of friends. And wherever you go, you get more friends. And when they leave, you get their e-mail addresses, or phone numbers, or screennames or whatever. You promise to come visit them; you hug when they leave or whatever. You’re excited to have a new friend and you e-mail them often. Maybe you’re romantically interested in them and you e-mail them OFTEN. Maybe you do go visit, lord knows I’ve done all that.

Unfortunately, the shelf lives of most of these relationships is a year, maybe two. Much longer for people you made serious connections with, but those are usually few.

But you never stay in the same place for more than maybe 8 months. Maybe a year in one place, but usually it’s a 1 week trip or a 4 month gig. And afterwards you usually go home to your old friends. Or maybe you don’t, because all of your old friends have moved away or maybe they are traveling themselves, or maybe it’s been years and you were concentrating so much on leaving that you never paid attention to them when you were home and your best old buds are now just acquaintances. You tell them a few choice stories right off the bat and they think your life is great, but after awhile they sort of tune out and lose interest. I mean, you just can’t relate to each others lives anymore.

Personally, if you can’t tell already from the tone of this post, I’m getting sort of sick of meeting people and having them leave in 4 to 6 weeks. This is my first contract on a ship, but this isn’t my first time traveling. When I got out of high school 5 years ago all I wanted to do was be a world traveler. Now I’m 23 and I’ve been to 40 countries, 4 continents, 30 states and I speak 2 languages. I got to the goal sooner than I thought I would, for sure. But I tell you, if you do this, you do this alone. The only thing that you always bring with you is yourself. Everything else changes, especially the people. Travelers are always the coolest people, you always get attached so quick, hoping that the inevitable won’t happen, but it does.

I don’t know if I’ll keep this up after this. I may not do another ship, I think I might like to find a place to stay for a bit. I was talking to my good friend Fiona today about that idea. I asked her if she ever felt that way and she said, “Sure, now and then – but where? Where could I live that would give me everything I want and wouldn’t bore me after a few months?” Fiona, whose Scottish, has been to over 140 countries, so you can imagine what she means.

I guess this post is a little dark, but I guess I’m a little bummed with the P’s taking off yesterday, as well as a lot of the crew leaving yesterday and more leaving after this cruise.

I remember sitting in psych 101 in college and learning about some pyramid deal that was supposed to represent the requirements for happiness or something. Sustenance needs, emotional needs…it eventually led to enlightenment or something like that at the top. I believe the need to have friends was up there. I’ve got great friends, but somethings still missing with this lifestyle. Maybe it’s time to find a home.