apparently i can do a handstand
the people we meet on vacation
last summer when my lease in new york ended, i decided to pack up my stuff and move home; splitting my time between my parents’ suburban home and traveling the world. in my adult gap semester abroad, i met a ton of cool, interesting, and very different people from all over the world. it was especially thought-provoking to meet people my age ~ some also solo traveling, and others escaping war or difficult situations in their home country. i couldn’t help but wonder if i’d be them, had i spawned somewhere else instead. with each new person i’ve met on vacation came another alternate reality i considered. meeting and connecting with different people is my favorite thing about traveling.
what i didn’t expect though, is the different parts of myself i’d get to meet along the way.
“on vacation, you can be anyone you want. like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself”
- emily henry, the people we meet on vacation
it clicked for me in a recent conversation with my friend s, who splits her time between boston and new york. recently she told me about how each city brings out different sides of her. her life in new york is loud and exciting. she’s got back to back plans from 6 am tennis to 9 pm drinks. she hosts events, takes improv classes, and is constantly inspired to keep creating. in boston, her daily routine is much more, well, routine. she spends her days at her corporate job, and then goes home to chill. in contrast, her boston life is softer and quieter. it’s different, and yet equally her.
s and i actually met because a mutual friend of ours introduced us to each other after recognizing how similar we were. we both loved to host things, write, connect people. we even had similar jobs and chased down niche side quests like no other.
when she moved to boston and i stayed in new york, our similarities seemed to diverge. and yet her boston life reminded me a lot of the time i spent in los angeles, working a chill job and chilling at the beach all day by myself.
i’ve been coming to this same conclusion for the past few years as i’ve gotten to live in a few different places. it is crazy how different my life can look, even just a month apart, just because i moved. i am often merely just a girl so influenced by the environment around me.
if my life was one braided thread, i’d venture to guess that i had only started adding new threads when i started meeting new people and going to new places. the side quests we go on, the new relationships we form, the new experiences we taste when we temporarily live elsewhere kinda cause the thread to split. all of a sudden, we branch out to develop another thread. these splits represent the ways we could be or the ways we could’ve been. and maybe this thread gets integrated back into the main thread or maybe it never does.
in the last few months of travel, i’ve met a more carefree part of myself in the form of a sparkly iridescent, almost liquid but sturdy tinsel strand. she did things most of my other parts would never do. frankly things that i’ve never done before, ranging from falling in love in california to attempting handstands and sneaking into hospital parking lots to feed chickens in lisbon to kissing a spanish man under the christmas lights of taipei 101.
perhaps it was the magic of these new cities, or the prolonged vacation mindset, or just plain old getting older that brought her out.
now that i’m back from my travels and committing to staying in new york for a while, i’m finding that this carefree self has been beautifully braided into the main strand of my life. i noticed myself being more decisive and spontaneous, making some riskier medium-term decisions relatively quickly, like switching teams at work and signing a lease without too much thought. both of which have higher risks and rewards than similar decisions i’ve made in the past. maybe i’m not as free as i was when i was traveling the world by myself, but i’m still making decisions i would not have a year ago.
somewhere along the way, i realized that i’ve been practicing this in therapy all along in the form of internal family systems (ifs) — the idea that we are each made up of a collection of separate parts. its been cool to accept all of my parts, even when they feel separate or even conflicting at times. that the girl who attempts a handstand for the first time in a yoga class in lisbon, the girl who goes on dates with strangers around the world, and the girl who spends most of her days debugging code that doesn’t work in new york are indeed separate, but all parts worth keeping at the table.
some additional photos from times i felt free during my travels:
So exciting to see the versions of ourselves different places draw out, and what sticks over time, agnostic of where we are or whether we’re on vacation 💃