This time last year I suffered a loss.

It came suddenly and quite literally took my breath away. For weeks, I didn’t sleep, eat properly and I shut down. That’s what grief does to a person, whether it’s an instant hit or surfaces in time, it comes for us all. 

We lost a close family member 2 months ago, we knew it was coming, we just thought we had more time and when it happened, everything seemed to stop.

Grief is the reminder that we’re not here forever and grief is a reminder that life is brutal. Maybe brutal is the wrong word, it’s unpredictable and no matter what you do, you can’t plan for the unpredictable. Even with prior warning you can’t predict how you will feel. Grief is the phenomena of all emotions. 

You can’t predict at that very moment what your body will do, how your brain and mind will cope with everything that’s going on. You might just be sitting on the sofa for hours, while things get put into place and ticked off the list of ‘matters that need attention’ and when night-time comes, your body and your mind are absolutely exhausted, you are drained of every emotion, every tear and every word. 

And yet, you don’t sleep. Sleeping is something that you always do and you don’t want to do something so normal. If you return to any kind of routine it’s like you’re moving on and no one wants to move on. Moving on means forgetting, it feels rude, it feels disrespectful, it feels wrong.

Everyone closed ranks to the outside world and time was suspended between everything before and the moment we were living. Is living the right word? The moment we were suspended in? Clung to no date or time, just letting it pass us by while we float in the ‘somewhere’. There was no future and every day seemed so unreal and dreamlike. Wandering around in a haze, quite unsure of what to do but at the same time going through the motions as if it was completely natural. All your future plans seem so unimportant, it was more about what should we do now? Right in this very minute. We haven’t got forever. 

What would we do differently? 

Are we missing a moment that we’ll regret later on? 

What part of life are we missing?

Are we living the life we are supposed to lead?

Where is our path taking us?

When it comes to hearing stories about someone when they die, stories you never knew, a history of someone’s life pushed together to be one final paragraph, a sum up of someone’s life, is very strange. As I sat there listening, I realised I didn’t really know him at all. I always had a feeling that I knew him, but his life before I came along was so much bigger than I knew.

He was a lucky man. He found happiness in the simple pleasures of life. He had a wife, he had children and soon he had grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He vacationed only in the UK and stayed in the same part of East London his entire life. I often wondered whether he was happy living the same life day to day. Same house. Same road. Same town.

I find myself now realising that he had it all. The human condition pushes us to keep going until we’re completely happy. Pushes us to strive forward into unknown territory. To find the perfect sky. To chase those horizons. To buy the pretty bags. Expensive trainers. Perfect wallpaper. Big TVs. When does it end?

It has made me identify why I travel. Most simply put, it is an activity to push the body and mind to escape to somewhere else and relax. It is the allowance we give ourselves to switch off from responsibilities and not feel guilty about it. 

I travel to search for something more than I have. I have a great life. I have a family that loves me. I have a husband. Me. Married. STILL, can’t quite grasp that. I’ll never be alone. I have amazing friends. I have a roof over my head. And I have the opportunity to build a travel company. Advice. Tips. Whatever it may be, I can tailor make it to what I know and what I can provide for other people. That makes me happy and I have the opportunity to follow that dream.

I understand now that those lucky enough to reach a point in their life and sit back and say hey I’ve got what I want are so very lucky. They are content and not racing after the next dream. They have it all. 

I’m still working things out. I’m still chasing that horizon. I’ve not found the ‘thing’ I’m searching for yet. Travel is an escape, I know that more than ever this year, but I also think I’m the best person I can be when I’m travelling. I prefer who I am when I’m out there searching for the next piece of the puzzle. People are different. 

Some people will think I’m lucky following my dreams around the world. And I am. I have an amazing life. Every once in a while though, I’m going to remember that there are those that can sit back and be content in life they’ve built. They can rest their feet while I’m still running.