Last year was one of the best travel years I’ve ever had. This year, well, while I did do some traveling, it was mostly either for work or up to Ohio or for my birthday/mourning my dad (although I did get to do my Florida Adam Ant midlife concert tour earlier in the year too). But I have another trip coming up in less than two weeks that seemed to come up way faster than I was expecting.
I bought the airline tickets back in March, when there was a fairly decent airfare sale going on. Back in March, I had no idea how this year would turn out. Maybe if I would have known that my dad was going to be gone only a few short months later, I might not have gotten the tickets to be out of town for Thanksgiving. I’m conflicted about leaving the country while leaving my mom alone for her first holiday without my dad. I talked it over with her numerous times and she basically told me that if I didn’t go on this trip, she would disown me. That we’ve never spent a Thanksgiving together since I moved to Texas because the cost to travel during that time is usually frightfully expensive. I know she thinks I shouldn’t change my life because of her, but it still makes me feel like the bad daughter. I’ve asked her if she wants to come here to Austin for Christmas but she hasn’t really decided what she wants to do yet.
And then there’s this whole company merger thing… I have no idea if I’ll have a job when I get back from this trip. Nothing like adding a bit more uncertainty and anxiety into my life this year, right? No wonder I keep getting sick. (I’m fighting yet another round of weird sore throat thing as I type this.) I know that my ability to compartmentalize has basically been broken open this year. But I never thought that it would lead to a decreased ability to fight off microbes. I used to never get sick; but this year, I’ve seem to come down with practically every virus that crosses my path. (Yes, I know I’m not sleeping or exercising or eating well; I know that plays a huge part in staying healthy. Maybe I need to go to one of those fancy health spas for a month to get myself right. God knows that I do not need to end this year with another pink melanoma lesion making an appearance.)
All of this is a big lead-up to my upcoming trip… Ordinarily, I would be beyond excited to get out and explore a new (to me) part of the world. Although technically the Maldives and Dubai are grouped in with the Asiatic countries in the atlas, I still feel like I can’t cross off Asia on my list of continents. But in less than two weeks, I can once I land in Singapore. (No, I have not read or seen Crazy Rich Asians yet…) But we’re not just staying in the island-nation the entire trip. Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Phuket, and Kuala Lumpur are all part of the itinerary. Back when I bought the airfare, it was agreed that it’s a long way to go so we might as well spend some time there. And with Thanksgiving in the middle of the trip, we could get away with tacking on additional time. So I get to add three more countries to my list soon (as well as a few new airlines and for a travel geek like me, that’s also fairly exciting).
And I am looking forward to this trip; it’s just complicated by all of these other circumstances right now. Like I said in a previous post, I know life is messy. And I get that I need to be grateful I’m even in the position to take what I hope will be an amazing trip. I just need to get out of my own head in order to capture these upcoming experiences without tinting them with my own anxiety and sadness and guilt. Because years from now, when I look back at this year I want to be able to point to this trip as a bright spot in what has been a pretty dismal year for me.