Vacation Without Destination

Vacation pay... does that mean I have to go on vacation?

What is a vacation, really? Because I’ve never truly been on one.

Okay, perhaps that’s a lie, because I’ve been to England once. To Denmark once and to Sweden once. I've been to Saudi Arabia once, for pilgrimage.

Yet I can’t remember whether I enjoyed it or cried. Buried beneath expectations and the influence of others. Wanting to run away, only to lose myself in the process. Feeling not good enough because I didn’t look like the rest, because I didn’t know how to behave like the rest.

Alone, I was in a restaurant, hundreds of miles away from home, accompanied by a mix of restlessness, suffocation, and panic. With a volcanic tension in my body and an avalanche of loneliness, I didn’t know whether to cry or to disappear.

Maybe I did enjoy the crying. Even now, it still hurts when I think back. Will I ever dare to return to that same restaurant, that same hotel, or will those first experiences forever color everything that follows?

The beautiful buildings I saw for the first time, but in my memory, lost their beauty.

The sweet scent of the hotel, but in my memory, makes me sick. Because when I remember, I still smell. When I remember, I still see.

My first memory of being away from home, I still recall.

It was a school camp. A classmate would always get homesick before we even left, unable to hold back her tears.

But me? I got homesick for the camp itself once we returned home. Finally, I could run freely, like a child. Finally, I was seen as a child.

“I’ll do it, after camp,” I often whispered to myself.

My first vacation allowance… wow. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Is it the title it carries? Because everyone around me kept asking where I’d go this year, as if it were obvious that everyone takes a trip every year.

Should I go somewhere then? Is that all vacation money is for? Or should I buy more material things, the kind companies try to sell you with their 'vacation deals'? No, I’m good.

If vacation means escaping from your daily life, what does that say about the way we live?

And what does vacation mean if you’ve never learned how to enjoy?

Perhaps the most beautiful journeys are the ones no one sees. The journey of learning to be alone. The journey of meeting your true self. And the terrifying journey of facing your fears and learning how to navigate them.

I’ve never been on vacation, but I’m building the ultimate one. I’m building a life I don’t need to escape from, in the name of vacation.

“I don’t live to work, I work to live,” a classmate once said. And I’ve thought about that a lot.

But I do live to work, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever truly done.

I work for meaning. For growth. And for something that stretches beyond today. I am a traveler, not necessarily of borders, but of worlds. And perhaps I’ve become quite good at it: getting lost, searching, and continuing.

To enjoy? I still have to learn how. At least, not in the way commercials teach us. Not in the way of escaping. Not in the chase of pleasure for its own sake.

Because perhaps that’s not why I’m here. Not to keep wanting more, but to move closer to something real. Whatever that may mean, for whoever it may be.

So, if you ask me what I do with my vacation money... I use it to pause, not to escape.

We often say we’re “going on vacation,” but perhaps it’s just an escape.

Perhaps the question shouldn’t be where you’re going this year,

but what you’re running from.