Marrakesh - Morocco
Life is a funny thing, and being in the middle of a global pandemic has really made that evident. Whilst we're all stuck in our little pieces of home and staring down the threads of an uncertain future I've been ruminating on the winding paths life can take us and the joy we can find in the unexpected.
A little over two years ago I was in a job, one that I enjoyed, but one, in which, I was ultimately going nowhere. So I decided to do something different, something to shake up my life and take me on a new journey. Cliché, right?
So I booked myself onto a 4-week bartending course in St. Martins in the Caribbean and I had a plan to go travelling across the Caribbean for a month or two after. I even thought I might try and find a bartending job whilst I was out there for a little while. But all the best laid plans and all that. I got a call a month before I was due to leave informing me that they'd received two category five hurricanes that season and. well, there wasn't really a bar school left. Long story short I switched my course to a different destination and found myself with two months of work with no plans, so I did what any sane person would do - I booked a one way ticket to Marrakesh.
I'm not sure, that over two years later I could express as articulately how I felt back then so here's some words I wrote whilst I was travelling.
Marrakesh is, in the simplest of terms, an experience. Before I've even reached my hostel I've spent an hour and a half in passport control. Having never travelled outside the EU before this was not something (naively) I even thought to expect. I then had to wait a further half hour for a driver to pick me up and take me to my hostel.
Safe to say that from such a beginning I was not expecting to fall so wholeheartedly in love with Morocco. I'm not sure I can even fathom where to begin detailing the whirlwind romance I've had with this country. I'm not even sure I should. Everything I've felt seems wholly disconnected from my everyday life that if I acknowledge the emotions, form them into sentences, put words to thoughts, then I'll have to acknowledge that this glorious bubble of adventure will end.
Although it's only been a few weeks since I left home, it feels like a lifetime . I feel disconnected from the person who left home, I'm not sure why I expected myself to fell the same, stay the same when I've opened myself up to experience life in a way that I never have before. I've opened my heart wider to the possibilities of living than I ever knew I could. The past few weeks have truly, in the most clichéd of manners, been a journey of living.
I am learning to be brave in the face of long time fears, I am learning to be open with my heart. I am learning to be myself and that people will still like me when I am. That there is no need for me to be anything but myself. I am learning to say yes to life. Something which was inconceivable to me. Most of all however I have learnt that life is beautiful and it is precious and I must experience every part of it I can.
It is amazing to me how quickly one can fall in love with a place, and, yes it might have a little to do with the people and not just the location. Still, I will always treasure the time I have spent here.
It is probably the most overdone thing to say that your backpacking trip changed your life but it doesn't change the fact that it's true. I left my home, lost and unfulfilled with life. And I came back with drive and love for living. When I was travelling I wrote a lot about what I was feeling, the things I did and the people I met because my poor mental health means I have a terrible memory and I hoped I could capture an impression of my adventure so that I could remind myself, especially on the days when I struggle to keep one foot in front of the other, just how much life there is out there and how at peace I felt experiencing it all.
I have so many more words to share but I think this is enough for one post.