“When destiny calls you, you’ve gotta be strong. I may not be with you but you’ve gotta hold on” – it’s been a while since I listen to that song. I guess the perk of traveling on a road trip is the rediscovery of old things and new alike.
I guess it’s almost a tradition now that once a year I’ll leave my hubby at home and go frolicking with my international friends. Vancouver and Ottawa in 2021. Chicago and Boston in 2022. Now Geneva and Santorini in 2023. Some of his co-workers said to him “you’re so great to allow him to go by himself” (which I find ridiculous since we’re both grown ass adult men. We can go wherever we want. Marriage is a combination to 10x each person as an individual, complete person; not a co dependency between two halves like some sort of parasite). Anyways, I digress. I do truly appreciate how chill and how loving he is about letting me do whatever I want as long as we communicate with each other.
Traveling solo comes with its fun and foley, of course. Especially for an anxious flyer like me. I guess my whole life as a brown person holding a Vietnamese passport have gotten me used to expect the very worst of flying. I did have to try to get used to my Canadian passport and just go. What a change in experience. The privilege that a country and a piece of paper can bring you.
We went on a road trip in Switzerland. In our twenty years of friendship, travels and road trips have been a hallmark of many laughter, many bickers, and many many amazing photos. It’s hard for friendship to come by in life, much less that one that transcends continents and decades. There are things and decisions we don’t quite understand from each other, but the love is there and the love is real
I couldn’t help but be grateful. I mean in my melancholy of my repeated fail attempts to get ahead, to grow in my personal pursuit, in my career, I often forgot how far I’ve come and how incredibly lucky I’ve been. The world has gotten smaller and closer for me. The friends have gotten fewer but closer as well.
And in this lonely planet we call home, I found my home. I found not a place, but a person, a being that is there for me when I need to return.
Home, then, is not a physical place. It’s a state of mind. It’s a state of being. Being next to you.
The person that I leave once a year to explore the world around me, and how much lonelier it would be without you, no matter how pretty it is.
I’m traveling solo, but I’m not traveling alone, for my friends are here with me around the world, and you are with me in my world.
Home is where we are.
Pace Fine Arts 