Pre-Travel, 16/11/22

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 Dear Luna,

In less than a month, I'm going to be going on the greatest adventure of my life so far, and if I am being honest, I am rather nervous. I don't think many people talk about the anxiety that comes with travelling. I've seen many social media accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and even YouTube talking about the excitement and the thrill of travelling. Don't get me wrong, the exhilaration within me keeps growing every day, but so are the worries.
My nerves aren't growing because I'm wondering what awful things could happen during my travels, as I am a woman. It's growing because of the thought of not seeing my family, my friends and the familiar.
Besides lockdown, this is going to be the longest time I am away from my parents. Sure, during the quarantine stage of my life, I was away from them, but I was still in the same country, just three hours east of them, writing up my dissertation as I finished my final year of University. This time it's different. This time I'm going to be over ten hours away from them, not only on a different continent but in a different time zone.
I won't be alone, thank god, I'll be with my cousin, but... maybe this time I will end up feeling homesick, even if it's for a short period of time.

It's not only that, no, it's the thought that once I come back to England that the start of adulthood will actually commence. Ever since covid controlled the world, I have felt that I haven't grown at all, that I am still the same age since the pandemic. I am living in a limbo world, and I am worried that after the travelling, I will still be stuck in this life where time is moving on as I am staying still. The anxiety that life after this is just going to keep on going down and I'm going to fail to achieve my dreams is something that I am dreading. No matter how many times I tell myself to not think about it, the thoughts have already been set alight and spewing fire to every path I see.
Who knows, maybe when I come back from my four months of travel, my outlook will differ from how it is now; maybe this opportunity is the one that will set the gun off for me to do everything I can to become a published author. To have rows of books under the name of SJGlatzhofer and Italia Holland, depending on which genre I am publishing in. For them to then be adapted into movies and series for millions of people to watch.

What a feeling that would be to come back from travelling and actually feel my age, twenty-three, and no longer feel twenty. To come back from Asia and feel that I am no longer stuck in limbo, to be free and not fear a life failure. After all, wouldn't I rather want to live a life where I try the best I can to achieve the vision six-year-old me pictured than a life where I didn't chase the dream and clutched it with both hands? That would be disappointing. 

Perhaps that is it. Perhaps I need to see this travelling experience as a way to say goodbye to my younger self, that one who thinks she doesn't have what it takes and welcome adulthood with arms wide open (no matter how cliche that is). The beauty and ugly side of it. But, as I said, I guess we will see how I feel once I come back home in April. 

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