We are currently finishing up what has been the worst week of the trip for me. It has been exactly 7 days since I got so sick I couldn’t see much of Budapest and wanted to sleep for 12 hours straight. I am currently experiencing the worst period of my life. Oh, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I was laid off from my job during this “week from hell” too and starting a travel blog is a whole lot of work!
Terrence and I are feeling strangely burned out although we haven’t been doing much of anything. If we were out for 12 hours a day, every day, sure. But we sit in a apartment without leaving, sometimes for two days straight. There is absolutely no reason we should be feeling burnt out at all. Even after staying at a location for a week, we still aren’t ready to move on and we still feel exhausted.
Maybe we are tired about thinking where to go next. The planning, the stressing, the research, all of it can become a burden. The fun of grocery shopping [“hehe it’s all in a different language”] has become an irritating necessity [“where the hell is the…./why on earth don’t Europeans have…..?!”] And the cursed backpacks are heavy as hell and make me want to sit in the middle of the train station and cry, ship all my belongings back to the United States, and wear one outfit for the rest of my life.
The towns are all blending together. European towns with their cobble streets used to excite us, and now we are over it. Everything looks similar. How dedicated can a sick person be to go out and check out another town with more streets that look almost exactly the same. It used to be cute, now it is monotonous.
Sometimes I want to give up. I’ve actually thought about what would happen if I decided to go home. For one, I would have to find a flight. Okay, that would take a little doing, but it is possible. My dad is coming to visit us in Europe in almost exactly a month so I am essentially stuck for another month. Even if I wanted to go home, I couldn’t. Not a very comforting thought for a sick person with back problems on their period in a foreign country.
Even at my darkest times, I remind myself this whole trip was my fault and I would be infinitely disappointed in myself if I ran away and went home. Other travel bloggers do it. Hell, even as a child I was on the road for 4 months out of the year, every year. How can everyone else do it yet I am exactly one month in and feeling over the whole idea. Sure it seems glamorous to everyone back at home, but the nomadic lifestyle can get to you at times.
Periods will end, at least for a few weeks. I will eventually get over this never ending sickness. Maybe I can send some of my clothing back with my dad so my back isn’t so gosh darn heavy. One day soon I will be in Ireland where the grocery stores will be in English. I will find another job and another source of income. We’re currently heading into the Alps and I’m looking to the mountains to rekindle my desire to travel and hoping the change of scenery will be good for the soul. We haven’t been in nature for an entire month so we are long overdue.
Although it can be tempting, this is the life I want and I can’t and won’t give up. I will fight. And by George, I will have a good time.
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