stolen baggage
I've been traveling through Europe on a post-grad escape from the real world, trying to stretch this experience as long as possible. It's an attempt to run from both the future and the past while maintaining what seems to be an acceptable post-graduate life path to run towards. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve loved almost every second of my trip, give or take some minor inconveniences or stressors that are just part of traveling with or without people through foreign countries.
My whole life, I've had this fear of moving forward, moving on to something new, something good. So, I’ve supplemented it with moving towards goals and progressing the way I should without actually mentally being fully there through it all. For as long as I’ve known, I’ve always had eight toes in and two hanging back in case the past reels me back. How silly it sounds to put it down as words, but even saying this, I don’t fully agree with its silliness.
Anyway, so I’m running—I’m on the run currently to escape what I couldn’t or didn’t want to accept at home while still enjoying life in the ways I know how. It’s so fun and awesome and cool, and then my baggage gets stolen. No, literally—broken car window, baggage I’ve carried with me for the last 30 days through eight countries and thousands of miles. The things that are arguably some of the most important to me: my college camera, my journals, my jewelry, my clothing. Everything that makes me, me, at this moment in time in the way that I know myself. Clothing and jewelry gifted or taken or kept from people no longer in my life but once important enough that I felt a piece of them needed to join me on my trip. Journals where I worked through the lowest points in my life with the intention to document moments I never wanted to return to—gone. Let alone my credit cards, my passport, my license, the documented existence of me—gone, taken, and forgotten.
It’s been a week, and I’ve been sitting with the irony of it all. The past I can’t let go of, the baggage I carry with me, physically stolen from my possession—literally and figuratively robbed from the baggage I carry. The universe's way of telling me to let go of the last physical reminders of the past; that I must move on because there is no longer an option to go back or to simply exist pretending nothing happened. My initial response to the situation was to call to the past I have no business being bothered in, but in a time of complete and utter discomfort, a moment of familiarity was the only thing that felt sane. And the last of their things were taken from me, and it felt as though the universe had left a voicemail telling me to care about anything else I lost and not just their shirt that I’ll never wear again, from a person who left my life months prior.
I’m not even sure what I was holding on to anymore, but the thought of letting go completely feels impossible. I don’t understand what I miss anymore. It’s just become such a little hum that lingers in my mind and makes me nauseous when I think about it too much. Moments like this remind me of the discomfort I’ve sought refuge in and how much my life has changed in the past year and how much it will continue to change. Maybe my body is getting tired of running, or maybe the universe is telling me the race was over the moment I set foot on the starting line.
