Letter to my 18-year-old self, before my first trip abroad

Hi young Marie-Gil,

In a few days, you’ll embark on your first solo trip. I am so proud that you had the courage to do it, that you didn’t wait for the perfect circumstances or for someone to jump in with you, that you took your dream in your own hands and ran into the unknown. You don’t know it yet, but this journey will be a turning point in your life.

At the airport, you’ll be excited. Excited to embark on an adventure for you and you alone. You’ll also be a little scared. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of feeling lonely and far away from your loved ones and afraid that you won’t be able to do it by yourself. You will have mixed emotions, but you won’t let that fear paralyze you. You will get on the plane and it will change your life.

In Italy, you will meet people from all over the world. You will open yourself to them, you will share unique moments, you will discover the city together and you will exchange about your respective countries. It will be two weeks filled with rich emotions, adrenaline and new learnings. You will be heartbroken to leave this place and your new friends. You will be sad, because this adventure that made you feel so alive will come to an end and you will have to go back to your normal life in Quebec. The emotions you will feel at that moment, no one else will understand them when you return, because that is the downside of having lived this experience alone. You will see that people talk a lot about going on a trip, but never about coming back and how difficult it can be. You won’t understand what will happen at first, because no one around you will think it’s normal, they will think you’re exaggerating. You won’t understand why you feel this way. And you will find yourself feeling this way again every time an adventure comes along and touches you deeply. And it won’t be the last time…

Two years later, you’ll go alone to Bali to work for a few months. A year after that, you’ll go to Budapest to spend a semester abroad. Upon your return, you will be nostalgic and sad for several months, because once again, you will have lived an experience that will have changed you, made you evolve and made you feel alive. You will see, it will pass, but you will want to start the experience again to feel that way one more time. So you will go to Dublin for a second semester abroad the following year. You will then have finished university, but you won’t want it to stop. See, you’ll already have become kind of addicted to the feeling. So you will opt for a six-month internship in the Cook Islands, a country you didn’t even know existed until now. This experience will also change your life. You will fall in love with the culture and even consider making a life there. This emotional cultural experience will turn you upside down like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. You will have experienced the sadness and nostalgia of a difficult return before, but nothing will compare to this one and the deep pain that will follow. When you return, you will not be well. For several months, you will be completely lost, you will no longer know what you want or who you are. You see, you will have adopted a different way of life than the one you came from, so you will wonder if you are really made for life in Quebec. You won’t find the answers right away. You will be in pain, so much pain. To stop hurting, you will choose to embark on another adventure, this time for 8 months. You will fly to the Maldives thinking that, like the times before, one adventure heals another.

It’s in the Maldives, isolated on a small island, that you will realize that you have put one foreign experience after another, without taking the time to stop to take stock and without taking the time to invest yourself in a life in Quebec that would be made for you. You will realize that when you were in Quebec over the past few years, it was always waiting to leave for the next destination. And at that moment, you will realize that you can no longer continue like that, because the wounds that your departures have inflicted on you over time have not truly healed with the next adventure. You’ll only have repressed them in your heart and managed to convince yourself that you were ok. You will realize that you have to live the pain caused by the parts of yourself that you left in other parts of the world. That you have to mourn the unique moments which happened in unique circumstances and which will never come back.

You’ll see that even 7 years later, no one’s talking about the return. No one talks about the growth process we go through in every adventure and how it changes us. No one talks about how difficult it can be to take back the life we left at home after an experience that has changed us. No one talks about the grief we experience when we leave another life elsewhere. No one talks about how suffocated we can feel when we return, trying to get back into a life that no longer suits us. No one talks about that irrepressible desire to leave again to breathe better.

So, young Marie-Gil, I wanted to warn you of what awaits for you in the coming years and of this pain that you will not understand. Because I would have liked someone to tell me, before this first trip, that my return would be painful. I wish someone had told me that this pain is a sign that this trip was a milestone and will have changed me. I wish someone had told me that this pain is normal. Most of all, I wish someone had told me not to repress that pain without experiencing what it had to offer me. I would also have liked someone to explain to me that I would have to make changes in my life in Quebec so that it would better corresponds to the change that had occurred in me.

You are now 25 years old, and you’re realizing this today, after having hit rock bottom for several months. But don’t worry, it’s never too late to change your life. You’ve now been back living in Quebec for a year and you’re still learning how to shape your life to who you are today and to stop trying to fit into a societal mold that no longer suits you. Travel is still an important part of your life, but you no longer want to leave to escape from something. It’ll take as long as it takes, but you’ll create the perfect life for yourself.

Bon voyage young Marie-Gil. This is the beginning of an adventure around the world that is just beginning.