I am a person who has never travelled before, during or after university (considering that I have moved to the closest country outside of Great Britain it could be argued that I have barely travelled now) however I have tried to start a life in a foriegn place where I truly have no grasp on the native language and where- in spite of the proximity to England- the cultural differences seep through strereotype and cliche into everyday life.
My true reason and rationale for leaving was one that I only dared to admit once I had a few drinks in me; that I wanted to remove myself from the comfort and ease I had at home, with a loving family and boyfriend, and impose onto myself a state of slight isolation and misery. The theory I have- which is yet to bare any fruit- is that my creativity had been non-existent in the previous year because of my contentment. Not a new or earth-shattering one by any means, but one that I had to allow myself to test by taking myself away from all the things and especially the people that provided such an easy life for me. The last time I had felt able to produce or write anything at all was at the height of the misery attained in a failed relationship and having to still live with a person I came to detest. Heartbreak writes for you. I couldn't stop myself, and even if it turned out to be strange, bitter drivel I produced at least there was somehting on a page. Making myself miserable again was my only solution, but obviously if I could achieve it while moving somewhere that isn't too far removed from home, where many English speaking people live and where jobs for talentless twenty-somethings are plentiful, then that's just the right amount of distance from the comfort of home. Still within reach of a train ride, but still spending a week on end alone, the only conversations you have being phonecalls or videocalls to home.
A strange thing happens to me if I don't use my voice for a day. I am incredibly insecure about how bad my french is, and this coupled with my lack of savings when I arrived meant that I happily avoided talking completely for days on end, without entering shops and making any transactions, I simply walked for miles each day taking in the sights of a beautiful city and hearing nothing but the voice in my head. I realised I had never been to a museum or gallery alone before, and during the first instance of seeing a picture that resonated with me, I turned to no-one to share my joy. There was only me there, and it was oddly validating. What was an even more alien experience was that on witnessing the most famous paintings in the world by the masters, with no photography allowed I wasn't able to share it with anyone. I wanted to show my mother a van gogh still life because she would have loved to see it, and been happy for me that I was seeing it. I wanted to send my boyfriend images of paintings from artists that I wasn't aware of before but that I had discovered I loved, and I wanted him to tell me how much he loved them too. But not having this qualification or being able to get it felt frustarting at first, and then liberating.
We have come to accept that most solid relationships, with friends or partners, are based on tastes and attitudes, our upbringings and our priorites. Everything in the world we live in is geared towards this but also, it makes the most sense. It makes for the easiest life and less conversation. It is so much more difficult to disagree with some one you love than to be able to say "me too!" to everything. And you can sit together and feel that you knew you were right all along and everyone else really are idiots because this one other person agrees with you. If you share enough you feel like a gang, a secret club that no-one else could even percieve of being part of because you two people have so much in common.
Except none of it is your own, it's simply similar opinion on something someone else created, and someone else bought, and then someone else curated and decided it should be put right there, where you can find it. Being totally alone (even for one day) removes all of this. It's just you and your thoughts and no-one there to validate or evaluate your opinion. No-one else can add to it or draw comparisons, it's only you. And one thing that becomes startlingly apparent is that without the open reference book in front of us that is the internet, our own minds seem disconcertingly useless. I tried to draw my own comparisons but came up with no artists names, merely vague images and fractures of feelings from the past 10 years of my adult life. And because I couldn't compose a neat sentence in my head with a direct reference to something else, I felt lost and the experience felt futile. This concept of 'if no one else knows I did this, did it really happen' isn't a groundbreaking one for this generation, but the realisation that I'd succumbed unwillingly to that pattern of thought made me feel very far from content.
