MENTAL HEALTH | TRAVEL | COVID

It’s Time To Admit That We Have Been Through A Lot

But I’m grateful for the time and space I’ve had to acknowledge it.

It all started this summer. We were back in my hometown of Canmore, Alberta, Canada. The waves of anxiety were crippling. I had never experienced anything like it before. My entire body felt like a wadded-up, tight ball of muscle. I did deep breathing and a lot of meditation to try and bring my body back to a relaxed state. It would work for a short time, but it didn’t take much to set it off again.

My patience was non-existent and I was constantly on edge. To put it simply, I was not myself.

At some point, I read an article that high anxiety and zero patience could be symptoms of something else at play. I think they mentioned PTSD or some sort of life stress as a trigger for these sorts of behaviors. While reading the article something caught my attention and it was then that I started to realize it was time to recognize that we have been through a lot.

We returned to Canada because we needed a break

We had come back to Canada in March for a break. At the tail end of our travels, we had a really hard few months in Europe. My debit card — our only way to get cash — had decided that it didn’t want to work anymore, which left us cashless and calling friends to send us money through Western Union (all of our credit cards were expired as well).

We had been denied entry into Bulgaria on an overnight bus from Turkey at 5:00 in the morning because we misunderstood the visa terms. This caused us to scramble to Greece, a more expensive country that ate up our precious financial resources much faster than we would have liked. This forced us to find a mural project to do so that we could get free accommodation which would help us to manage our remaining money better.

We had a series of missed buses and one that left before its scheduled time which we, of course, also missed. There was even a time when I got off a train in Amsterdam the day before we were to fly back to Canada, but Chris got trapped on it by the people coming in and couldn’t get off. Thankfully we were able to find each other again in a short amount of time since I had our only cell phone with me and he had all of our money with him (that is a story for another time). The absolute utter exhaustion and frustration we were feeling by then is difficult to put into words.

This was all after we spent 2.5 years in Africa during COVID.

We really needed a place to rest and recoup from the craziness that our life had become, but I now realize that we didn’t get one. This is because we also came back to Canada to check in on my parents who were struggling with numerous health problems.

Upon touchdown, we immediately got straight to work helping them to regain their health and well-being by downsizing the things in their condo. They had moved while I was away from a large house that was three times the size of their current place. They had way too many things stuffed into their small space and I could see how much it was affecting them both physically and mentally.

But while I was busy helping them, I was forgetting that I also needed to help myself.

We didn’t get a break

Shortly after our arrival, we then started painting a large mural project. While painting murals is good therapy for us, the size of the project was sometimes taxing. We put 100 hours into the project and were thrilled with the results. But it was a test of patience and determination, for sure. We longed to be in a situation where we could just relax. Where we didn’t feel like we had to do things for other people all the time. We desperately needed time to ourselves.

When we finished a housesitting commitment and left Canmore in mid-August, I was at a breaking point. My nerves were frazzled and I felt like my body was going to explode. The knot in my stomach was intense, and in my last week there I thought at times that I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I knew that we just needed to get ourselves to a place that was quiet and peaceful, somewhere where there were no demands on us to do anything.

Thankfully, that place presented itself and we found ourselves on a very remote and quiet farm for 5 weeks. We had our own house, we ate from the garden, and we slept and rested a lot. We left the farm three times in those 5 weeks, only going somewhere when we desperately needed something.

I didn’t know how badly we needed that, but it is all clear now. It was then that I finally had the mental clarity to realize that we have been through a lot these past three years.

We were initially happy that we avoided COVID

Before returning to Canada, we had been out in the world for the entirety of Covid. While being out there, we were thankful. We were grateful that we weren’t in North America and all wrapped up in the lockdowns and fighting that was going on over here.

We were mostly in Africa and there were few restrictions and a very small portion of the population even took the virus seriously. People got on with their lives, and nothing really changed too significantly. Even the infection rates were very low and we found ourselves living in a very alternate reality to what was going on over here.

There was no hoarding, there was no arguing about vaccines, there was no hatred and division. Honestly, that part of it was great.

But while I initially felt like we got off scot-free, I now realize that we were the ones to witness the receiving end of the ‘first-world’ lockdowns. While Europeans and North Americans were told not to travel, and some were stuck in their houses, the rest of the world which depends on tourism for a living, started to suffer.

First, tourism stopped in Morocco, where we found ourselves locked into the country with the borders closed. This was 2020 and just the beginning of the uncertainty. We could see that people were starting to suffer, but it wasn’t extreme at this point.

But by 2021, things were starting to look very different. By now we were in central Africa and at one point, we were living in a village in Uganda that quite literally found themselves starving. Tourism had taken a sharp dive and their main economy had gone with it. It was there that we found ourselves in an interesting situation.

We had been painting murals in a guesthouse for a month just outside the village. We had witnessed their crops withering and dying because of a drought, and we had gotten to know some of the villagers during our time there. Something desperate was happening that was no fault of theirs, they just happened to be on the wrong end of it.

Do we help to feed the villagers, or do we walk away and pretend like it never happened?

Well, I’m sure you can imagine that our good conscious would not allow us to just walk away. We had to at least try to help — even in some small way. Thankfully through generous donations from friends and family on online platforms we ended up raising enough money to feed the village for 12 weeks which brought them back on their feet again and strong enough to move forward.

Overall, we stayed in the village for 7 months while also teaching them permaculture techniques and building them a community garden. Our dedication to not only trying to fix the immediate problem but also attempting to help them move forward into a more sustainable future almost killed us physically and mentally. We left there feeling exhausted and like we had nothing left to give. With our frames gaunt, we were mere shells of humans walking the planet.

Traveling through areas ravished by lack of tourism was hard

But we weren’t finished with Africa just yet. We would stay on the continent for almost another year, even returning to the village we had helped 6 months later to check in on them.

Over the course of our time in Africa, we traveled through many areas of intense desperation as tourism died. Numerous people suddenly found themselves out of work and out of money. Tourists that flocked to these places stopped, and many country's that enjoyed tourism as their main economic contributor, watched it all vanish.

Those of us who were out in the world during these times weren’t exactly the tourists who contributed in a large way to the industry either. The people that we met out there at that time were largely full-time travelers like ourselves. We didn’t come across many people who were simply holidaying and spending gobs of money. We were all just trying to survive out in the world like everyone else.

Trying to pretend that witnessing things like this doesn’t affect a person is ludicrous. While most will never understand what we went through, we can see now that it had a very profound effect on our overall mental health and well-being. And I’m so very glad that I have finally given myself the space and time to recognize it.

I’m very good at covering up my problems

I was raised by a British father who insisted that showing emotions is a weakness and that we just have to suck it up and move on. I’ve always been a very emotional person, many times more emotional than either of my parents can bear. So, along the way, I have learned to mask my emotions and always try to put on a happy face. But while I smile on the outside, I am often working to quell the darker demons on the inside.

I know that I’m not the only one that has had to do this in life.

I think lately my insistence on trying to let everyone know how happy I am has also stemmed from my determination to make this lifestyle work for me. Many are skeptical that this is just some sort of whim, or maybe they think it is a mid-life crisis. But for me, this is really the life that I have dreamt of since I was a teenager.

I never did want to comply with society’s standards. I never wanted to live a conventional life. Sadly, though, through one decision after another, I found myself doing just that in my 20’s and 30’s. Finally, though, in my forties, I am determined to live my life on my terms.

Trying to put on a happy face and show everyone how great it is, is my way of making sure that people don’t think that I have made a mistake. And let me be clear. We have in no way made mistakes in how we have chosen to live our lives these past 6 years. It’s just that we have been subjected to more life experiences than the average person has had to deal with.

Most experiences have been great, but others have been downright hard.

Harder than I have ever admitted before now.

What do we do next?

This summer, after Chris was dealing with intense anger (and before we even really understood why), he began online therapy with a platform called Better Help. Although we could only afford for him to do it for a couple of months, he found great relief through all of it and I can clearly see the results of his sessions.

He is much calmer and is able to better manage the angry outbursts that were plaguing him.

Now that I have realized that many of my problems stem from the same reasons that he had such intense anger, I can see that we will both benefit from this. So beyond talking to friends and family members about how we are feeling and our thoughts on what we have, and are, going through, we will be seeking therapy together when we have the time and the financial means to do so.

But already, I can tell you with authority, that admitting and recognizing our struggles, and why we were having them, has brought relief that I couldn’t have imagined. Suddenly I understand just why I have been such a bundle of nerves, why I have not been able to deal with tensions and loud noises, and why I have been sometimes crippled with anxiety these past few months.

It’s easy to point fingers at others and blame them for our shortcomings, but it is another thing altogether to recognize that we have it within ourselves to heal from our traumas. I truly look forward to my path of recovery and know that in no time I will be back to myself and feeling much better about everything.

But we have all been through a lot, haven’t we?

In finally recognizing that Chris and I have been through a lot these past few years, I have started to realize that it isn’t only us.

Coming back to Canada this time has been startling to say the least. We left a society of people who loved to gather together and socialize. People had places to go and things to do. But now, most people we visit just stay home. They are either too scared to go out and be social or are just too lazy to bother.

Instead of going out for meals, people are ordering in. Instead of gathering for drinks after work, glasses of wine are shared over a zoom meeting.

These are the beginning stages of the downfall of our civilization itself. People need each other. We are nothing on our own.

We need each other

One thing we learned while out in the world is that no matter what, people need to be able to lean on each other. The places we traveled in during COVID suffered greatly, for sure, but in the end, their sense of community was what held them together.

This is how much of the world operates. Many societies out there still rely on their neighbors to help them out. Families keep generations of family members in one house. They are tight-knit, and they are resilient. In the end, these are the ones that will fare better than those of us who are attempting to shut ourselves off from the world.

And at the end of the day, don’t we all need to get out and expand our horizons? We need to continue traveling, to learn new things about our fellow human beings, and we need to keep spreading our wealth to those nations that are less fortunate than ours.

Hiding in our homes and behind our curtains is surely helping no one, most certainly not ourselves.

Nobody has gotten off scot-free

Now that we realize the sort of healing we need, we will take the time to make sure that we are good and ready before we head back out into the world. But in the meantime, we will continue traveling around Canada and visiting friends and family. It is these human connections that ultimately will help us to heal. It is in sharing our stories that we can realize that we are truly all in this together.

Because it isn’t just us who have been through a lot. In fact, I believe that none of us has gotten away with anything. The whole world was literally flipped upside down, and we all now need to navigate a new future and a new direction. There is no going back to how things were. Let’s face reality.

Strong mental health is and will be crucial for us to be able to move forward. We need to take care of ourselves and get our minds back on track before we can start to move the world in the right direction once more. Talk to your friends, and gather with your neighbors. It is time to come outside again, and it is time to travel.

It’s time to reimagine and rebuild a better future

It is sad to me that Canada and the US live in such intense fear about what is happening in the rest of the world. Meanwhile, there are countries that are rebuilding, reimagining, and restoring some semblance of a future life. They aren’t just hiding in their houses and waiting for disasters to strike.

Like them, we need to get active again in society and still contribute to it in meaningful ways. People need to get out to the markets and they need to socialize with their friends as they continue on with their favorite hobbies.

Gatherings need to happen so that we can create memories together. The ones that felt so special to experience in the past. It’s time to create ideas together and to participate in doing the things that we love to do.

Lockdowns happened, for sure. But they are over now.

Most of the rest of the world is already moving on.

We must also.

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