Travelling changes you in secret ways. The air of a different country gets into your lungs, the water soaks under your skin and you are given different dreams even though you sleep under the same moon. You may think that you have remained the same person, but you haven’t. At least this was the case for me. I have been travelling a long time, but I think that it can happen even when you’re only away for a short while.
These days, as I get ready to leave, I remember the very first time I arrived here on the cote d’azur. I wish that I could see this place with those eyes again, but you never can. I don’t want to admit it, but my eyes have glazed over a bit. I find myself adopting habits of the people here more and more, especially this time as I am living in an area that is quite busy. I don’t wake up so early anymore, and I don’t really have breakfast. If I do, it will only be a coffee, which I am having these days often without milk. Thankfully, I don’t plan to start smoking soon.
I still try to retain some of my Australian habits here… to drink a tea in the morning, to eat dinner early. But it is getting more difficult. I feel pulled in more and more. At first, I simply breathed in the air of a new place. Now, I eat their food, drink their wine, and speak their words regularly. I feel that I am losing myself a little, but sometimes we need to lose ourselves a bit in order to come out knowing what we want.
When I go home, my family notices that I am the same person but I do different things. I eat cheese without crackers, go to the beach more often and complain that there are no wine bottles with corks anymore. Not all of these things are necessarily French, but they have all happened as a result of living here. I appreciate the things I had never appreciated about Australia before and have adopted the things I like about a different way of living life. The same happened after living in Singapore… and I wonder what will happen after I stay in Japan for a while.
At the end, I feel like a big mess. I’m not pure or uniform, and don’t quite fit anywhere. It is lonely and wonderful at the same time. In fact, travelling around has not really enriched me but rather it has revealed to me what’s always been underneath. I realised, after convincing myself that I don’t fit in anywhere… that no one really feels that way anyway. Under all the varying habits of people across the world, there is something smooth and untouched. A core, round and dense, that I love to look for wherever I go.
Leave a Reply