Taste of Freedom
I’ve always been a free spirit. I’ve always traveled, very young and every time I had the chance to do so. I knew I wanted to have the freedom to travel the world while having enough money to be comfortable doing so.
So, in my twenties, while I was with my long-term boyfriend, we left everything we had in Paris to travel to New Zealand and do some WWOOFing while exploring both islands; and it was amazing. We were meeting new families every other week, learning new jobs, and sleeping on horrible mattresses. But I liked the life we had. When we got back to France, I understood I was the only one who liked it. Turns out, my former boyfriend wanted to have babies, a house with a white fence, a dog, and some crispy chicken with potatoes on his parents’ table every Sunday.
He broke up with me and I stayed in Paris to find a job and get my shit together. I still hated the idea of having a normal life, and while all my friends were buying houses, getting pregnant, and posting pictures of gender reveal parties on Instagram, I kept on traveling, partying, volunteering, and meeting new people while still living in my crazy expensive studio in Paris I would barely sleep in. In September 2019, I turned 30 and something clicked. I quit my job, I quit my expensive studio and I decided to travel full-time.
I thought I had nailed life. While the whole world was bothering itself with dirty diapers and mortgages, I had nothing but my freedom. It did feel lonely sometimes but could see the reward every time I would pack and unpack, admiring the only possessions I had that could fit in a 30L Decathlon hiking bag.
It feels lonely at the top of a pandemic
Then Covid hit, and it hit hard. I was back then living at a South African sanctuary, and even though things were complicated, I felt so lucky to be in the wild, with lovely animals and free food — in exchange for working 13 hours a day to keep the sanctuary afloat — when people were struggling in small studios and having to deal with lockdowns and curfews.
Once again, I was free. But I was alone. So alone. With the borders closed and no airplanes that would take me back… home? But where was my home after all?
I started asking myself questions, about what really mattered, and how I would do without being able to be with my loved ones if the situation was staying the way it was.
When I’d left Paris, I thought I would come back once a year, tops. But when I had the chance to board a repatriation flight 6 months after I left and I took it. Happily. I was missing my sister, my niece, my parents, and my friends.
Things were changing.
I always thought freedom was the right to travel, move places, and discover new ones. But Covid showed me freedom especially was about being able to see the people you love and come back to places you call home. I kept on traveling but would go back to France every 6 months, to take my shot of love, and find back my homes, even though my name was not on the mailbox: my sister’s, my friends’ sofa, this restaurant we always meet up at, my dad’s…
And then there were two
In march 2021, I met him. I am not going to tell you the marvelous story of how my life changed forever when I laid my eyes blah blah, but I definitely fell in love, and I fell hard.
I still wanted to travel, l but after another year and a half of doing so with him, it felt different. Even though I still loved discovering new places and enjoying new food in Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, and the Maldives… it felt like the thing I loved the most was the idea of trying to cook the dishes in our kitchen once we would come back to our place.
But our place was the whole world, and that’s why I had quit everything three years before, wasn’t it?
I would catch myself dreaming about a living room that would look like us, and a kitchen with spices and tags on them…
Oh my God, I became one of them. I could not believe it. And I was truly the happiest.
We got engaged, and it made me feel so happy to think about a life together, a home we would build, a future in one place, and a place to call home. I wanted a Golden Retriever, new bed linens, candles with a cheesy name like freshly cut grass or Sunday at the farmer’s market, a blender, and matching towels.
Shit, I was way too deep into normal life.
And then there were two…ways of life. Or three, or four, or a thousand.
And it is fine. Being without possessions, nor home, and traveling the world is no better than having a house and a Golden Retriever. This is not cooler, more hype, or more anything.
Nor is being minimalist versus spending 800$ on a Marc Jacob’s cross-body bag. If it is what you want and what you feel like you need at this very instant, and as long as you acknowledge what the other person also wants, or the other people you share your life with. We do change, and at 33 yo, I’m far from being the same person I was at 17. The dragon tattoo I have on my blade reminds me of it on an everyday basis. We are free to change, to make poor decisions, and bad choices, and to be okay with them, as long as we are brave enough to face them and ask ourselves: Am I where I want to be right now? And if not, what should I do to change that?
By the way, does anyone know a good tattoo removal clinic in Bali? Asking for a friend.
