Traveling Is A Great Experience, But It Is Not The Answer To Your Problems

"Eat, Pray, Love" was a load of sh*t.

Okay, perhaps I need not be so harsh. A woman went through a horrific breakup, subsequent life crisis and chose to find enlightenment, pleasure and healing by traveling the world. We should all be so lucky.

I don't doubt she had a bevy of life-altering and monumental experiences that contributed to her psychological recovery. But, when I read through her stories, thought processes, decisions and reasoning for embarking on a world tour, I see a woman searching for answers in the wrong places, placing Band-Aids on malignant tumors. I see myself.

I have been interested in travel and cultural experience from a young age. I left home for school when I was 18, lived abroad in Turkey for five months, journeyed alone through Europe after graduation and am now living in Ghana for one year.

My friends, family and support system remain in California. The idea of exploring untouched territory and venturing out solo are certainly at the core of my desire to move freely about the world — or so I believed.

When I hold up mirror up to my adventures and the intense feelings of claustrophobia that beget them, I don't see reflected a pure, unadulterated love for travel.

In its stead, I'm left staring at a scared, broken girl who urged to escape with the deep misconception that a change in psyche is the byproduct of a change in scenery. I learned that altering the exterior will smooth out the rough interior.

I learned that most issues stem from a state of stasis and can be cured through the simple act of movement, of uproot. Physically leave the bad, and you become whole and new, I thought.

I have eaten, prayed and loved my way through four continents, and my only steady traveling companion has been my psychological baggage. I wouldn't trade my choice to stay in motion for anything; I am grateful for every single second of these years and each person who has floated in and out along the way.

My naïveté, however, I can forgo. It's time to put away childhood things, like the notion that traveling will inherently heal my soul. It's time to face myself and fix myself. It's time to stop assuming my camera roll of the world will do it for me.

With my special and unique brand of mental peculiarities, which not only run the gamut but barrel roll through it, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact time they hit or increased. When I attempted to cure myself, though, those memories and situations remain clear as day, as do their failures.

When I was well into my first stint of anxiety, panic attacks and mental fog, my plan of combat was college and a sea of new faces where I could relearn how to swim. For a year or so, my strokes became stronger and my form better, but I soon began to drown again.

When I weighed in at an unnatural 105 pounds and finally recognized this abnormality, I decided to study in Turkey, praying I'd leave my disordered brain at home in California.

When I was living with my parents and my skewed body image had not disappeared as I'd hoped, I took off to San Francisco. Away from my childhood surroundings, I figured I'd grow as a person, shrink my self-doubt and emerge normal in both size and psyche.

When I was unimpressed with activities I once loved and felt stuck, stale and lost, I scoured job sites for positions in Africa. I transported myself to Ghana, where I believed I would immediately feel "found."

This brings us to the present. I am as far from home, both in culture and distance, as I could get, yet my blood still contains traces of depression, anxiety, eating disorders and claustrophobia. I have nowhere to run. If Africa was not enough of an escape and, therefore, solution to my problematic mind, I honestly don't know what could be.

What I do know — what it's taken me years of pain, confusion, trials and errors to understand — is that the simple act of travel is exactly that: an act of simplicity. If you want to move and alter what lies deep within your brain and your heart, complexity is required.

Travel does not imply complexity. Sitting still and talking with a friend does not imply simplicity.

What is the proper way to heal the mind and keep it at peace? I haven't the slightest idea, but I'll stay motionless for the time being and let you know when I do.

Photo Courtesy: We Heart It