Almost a year ago, I was watching the film “Eat, Pray, Love” from my dorm bed in a cabin in the limestone mountains of Vietnam. My friend had called my plan to travel Southeast Asia the “Eat, Pray, Love trip” and I wanted to know what was supposed to be in store for me.
I found out that I was apparently going to divorce my husband, learn Italian, live in an ashram and then finally meet my beautiful, Brazilian soulmate in Bali.
Looking back on it now, having never got the opportunity to use my ‘tudo bem’ on anyone, I wondered if I had done it all wrong. I thought that if I did it all right I would’ve found myself. I mean, I did, at least parts of myself that I didn’t know were there. Then, I realized the disappointment that I was feeling came from the fact that I didn’t get a clear ending like Julia Roberts did.
Her story ends with her falling in love and sailing off into the sunset. My story just goes on with no closure.
Somehow, I had set out with the intention to learn more about myself and came out of it with the expectation that I had to fall in love for my whole adventure to mean something. Love and adventure always seem intertwined with each other because they’re both the things that dreams are made of. These dreams, of course, are often for women.
While I don’t believe that we should fantasize about the love that’s portrayed in movies as it often depicts women giving up their dreams of adventure in exchange for love, I digress.
Adventures inherently have a certain impermanence to them, giving them that dreamlike effect. Going on a trip, no matter the destination, gives us the emotional freedom that we are not often afforded in “real life.” Our obligations and hangups about ourselves are left on the coat rack by our front door.
We allow ourselves to do things we wouldn’t normally do, like buy that $5 coffee because the view from the cafe overlooks a famous landscape, or walk into a bar simply because you liked the music or flirt with someone you met at said bar. This is where I think love often gets mixed up with adventure. One does not necessitate the other, but rather gives it space for them to coalesce. Adventure gives us the clarity of mind to focus on ourselves and what we like and don’t like.
In the absence of that everyday muck we can, dare I say, listen to our hearts.
My anxiety was my personal everyday muck and it didn’t leave me after I walked out the door or even off the plane. It took a good two days of humidity and curiously intimate conversations with strangers for me to finally sweat out the last of my anxiety. The idea that people who barely knew each other and then pulled me, another stranger, into their group without hesitation was beyond what I think we expect in real life.
After that, I scrapped the rest of my itinerary and just let the advice of people I met along the way lead me to my next destination. Being that vulnerable also means you are confident enough in your own competence to protect yourself should you need to. There were a lot of nights when I stayed up talking with people about what we left at home — which made us come here — and all the people we had already met.
I received a lot of secondhand love advice, and was told just as many cautionary tales. As I journeyed through Southeast Asia, I will admit that I did fall in love, platonic and otherwise, with many of the people I met, just as Roberts did.
To this day, my lack of closure still haunts me. A small part of me wonders what it’d be like to keep in better contact with the people I met, and sometimes an even smaller part wonders if anything could ever go anywhere. At that point, I chide myself, knowing I’m fine where I am and for not appreciating everything else I learned along the way.
You can’t live in a dream forever, and an adventure is still valid even if there’s no souvenir in the form of a beautiful, Brazilian boyfriend from Bali.
