A Year Today

 

Wednesday 4^th March, 2015. A date, much like any other, and of little consequence to the grand populace, but one with an abundance of significance for me. You see, it was this same date a year ago that I left my beautiful, wild, Lord of the Rings famous country, New Zealand. A year ago that I sat rigid in the car on the way to the airport, feeling neither sad, happy, nor excited. All I could feel was an all-encompassing fear that shook my hands, pulled at my stomach and emptied my brain of just about everything. Before leaving home I had the spontaneous idea to sew myself a small bag to store my passport so it could stay safe, under my clothes, next to my body. I knew what I wanted it to look like in my head, and after 15 minutes of sewing all I was left with was the most basic, ridiculous little bag that, apart from its ability to hold my passport, looked nothing like what I had set out to create. That was the first time I ever realised that your brain can totally and completely be switched off by fear.
 

The me that left New Zealand

Now, with the sun warming my back as I write on a park picnic table in the little village of Lamporecchio where I live, I am so grateful that despite my fear, I decided to get on that plane, leave my incredible family and head into a mostly unplanned future. Unplanned as it was I could still never have imagined, even then, that I would still be in Italy, be who I am now, headed where I am heading. This gap year that has turned from an OE to so much more than that, to a chapter of my life in which the “travelling” I thought it was all about, is only a small part of this amazing experience, was the best decision I have made in my life so far.

I have seen the ruined remains of Rome, the famous mosaics of Ravenna and eaten the chocolate, Gianduian, in its birth place, Turin. I have walked the streets of London, explored the small typically English town of Sherborne and revisited my childhood friends, school, parks and memories in Stourbridge. From the Eiffel Tower in Paris to the canals of Amsterdam and back to the narrow streets of Venice. I have seen the rolling hills of Heiligenberg, eaten Currywurst on the banks of the Hamburg harbour, and seen the sun rise over the Swiss Alps beyond Lake Konstanz. I have attended Mass in St. Peters Basilica in the Vatican City, and seen Raphael’s frescos in the Sistine Chapel. I have learnt about how many different types of cheese there are, and how amazing and different each one tastes. That biscotti is not a type of biscuit, but the Italian translation of the word biscuit. That gelato wins over ice-cream every time and oven baked pizza blows Dominos out of the water, through the atmosphere and far into space. Preferably into a black hole. How Italian slow cooking beats anything out of a can. Which wines fit with what, and how to progress through them during a multi-course meal. I am a grappa and no-sugar-espresso drinker. A mussel, octopus, and cuttlefish eater! These are a mere handful, a small paragraph worth of the things I have experienced, seen and learnt. They are the tip of the iceberg, the icing on the cake. The filter on your photo. What I am saying is they are the things that look good on paper, Facebook, Instagram. The things that make it look like I am having the most amazing time ever. Which I am. But what is mentioned above is by all means is only the smallest part of the Why.

The tip of the iceberg

You see, what I did was take myself out of where I am most comfortable. Away from everything familiar, family, friends, expectation to go to university or get a job, even my native language. I did not let myself PLAN each and every day, unlike my previous habit of creating 10 year life plans, almost to the day of what I would do when, to get me to where I wanted to go. As cliché as this is going to sound, I have to say it because ultimately there is no other way to explain. And though it has been said to me a million times before, I now realise there is a difference between understanding and Understanding. Or knowing and Understanding. I have and am still, learning to live my life as the destination, not aiming for it. I am not doing things to GET somewhere. I am not doing things so my life can start. Because what I have realised is that this is my life, it has started. It is Now. I am living life every day for that day, not only to reach a goal and thus clouding everything in between setting it and achieving it. This experience has forced me to grow up in a way I did not realise I was so in need of doing.

Though from the outside there may not seem much difference, red is still my favourite colour, I still love fifties dresses. Chocolate and croissants are still my all-time favourite foods, I am as sarcastic as I ever was and I still believe Game of Thrones is the best program ever. But, on the inside there has been a massive, positive shift. That scared girl who left the airport, tears in her eyes, fear gripping every single tiny part of her body and mind, her newly polished shoes, pristine clean top and brand spanking new backpack, is now more like an old friend whose life shaped mine in an incredibly important way, but who is now no more than a fond memory of the past. And who I am now, the work-in-progress that I am, is still an upgrade from  the past model.

The new though still ever growing and learning me

When starting to write this post, I really had no idea what direction it would go in, and the last thing I expected was for it to turn out how it just did. I don’t want this to be taken heavily, this is not a self-help or journey-of-my-inner-development story. As far as I am aware the biggest thing I have learnt is that I don’t know anything, there is so much for me to learn and that this is only the beginning. But I just want to say to anyone who is even considering doing something remotely similar, DO IT. I don’t care if you are leaving school and want a gap year, have finished university and need a break before full-time work, are in the middle of your “work-life” and need to get out or have already retired and realised you haven’t done anything like this yet. Just do it. Because you will learn not only an abundance of knowledge about the world that you can never get from a book, a movie or the internet, but also more about yourself than you ever realised was there to be learnt.