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How Trauma Stole My Will to Travel (and How I Took It Back)
My first experience with travel was highly traumatic so I avoided it for 10+ years. Here’s what happened I finally took the trip of a lifetime.
“If you could go anywhere, where would you go?”
I was stumped. I rambled for a few minutes about how I hate airports and love routine and haven’t taken a vacation in…well, ever because the only place I go is home for family obligations and the only time I’d been out of the country was to…
And that’s when it hit me: War. Iraq.
It’s not that I don’t like traveling. How would I know if I’d never done it? It’s that I associate traveling with a traumatic experience. I signed up for that trip and I’ve been living with the fallout from that fateful decision ever since. That’s why I don’t travel anymore. But that isn’t the interesting part of the story.
The interesting part of the story is what happened when I finally did.
There’s something about a packed bag that makes my heart race. It reminds me of the night before I left for Iraq the first time. It was just me, a duffel bag and a backpack sitting together in an empty room that sounded hollow and harsh when stripped of everything that…
