My first travel was when I was three months old. It was a direct flight from Jeddah to Manila. My mother told me I only cried once during the whole flight. She said she knew, even then, that I wasn’t meant to stay in one place and that something in me already belonged to motion. As if I had already understood what it meant to leave.
I am on the move, always. Not to collect passport stamps, not just for curated memories for my Instagram feed, not to escape a place but to find pieces of myself scattered across others. I am always mid-departure even in the middle of arriving.
There is a silence that comes with being a stranger somewhere new or building relationships with strangers. Even in the places I have called home, in the last four countries I have lived in, it’s easy to feel stuck and strangled by routine. To some degree, movement is the only only way I can feel something tangible. Something I can actually touch.
I think I learned too young that some things are only beautiful when you’re leaving them. Or maybe that beauty clings to the rearview; that light you only notice when you drive away. And so, I chase it. Again and again and again… and again. Different languages, new beds, the click of my suitcase wheels on airport tiles. I am almost ashamed to say that I am addicted to the concept of this rehearsal. Something I never really finished saying goodbye to.
The first moment I left something behind, it felt freeing – I knew I would keep doing it. It’s like chasing a high. I don’t remember exactly what it was. Maybe my childhood town in Saudi Arabia, maybe it was when I graduated university in Manila, maybe it was when I jumped into a cab in Dubai on the way to the airport and decided I would never look back, maybe it was when I watched my mother board the plane to England and I was just a child, or maybe it was when I first left someone I knew wasn’t good for my soul. But I remember the feeling: the ache of stepping away and the need for persistent search of something I don’t have.
People often joke and ask if I’m running away from something. I tell them no, but I also don’t lie. I’m not running – I’m circling. I always come back. Home is always home. But I orbit a version of myself that only exists in transit. There’s comfort in toing and froing. Trains and planes understand what most people don’t: some of us only feel real when we’re not standing still.
Don’t get me wrong, there is grief in it, too. It’s not loud or dramatic, but it is the awareness of the loneliness that comes with being untethered. A hundred brief homes, coffee cups left half-finished in countries I may never return to, friendships built that I walk away from, raves I will not experience again at home, and fleeting encounters that made me feel more alive than anything else.
Still, I go. Not out of restlessness, but reverence for all the places I have yet to see and the versions of myself I might become there.
Time moves, but I am paused where the leaving began. Everything since has been pilgrimage to understand why that first departure felt like both an ending and a beginning. I am happy. Not content. But free. Maybe, someday, I’ll find a place or a person where I won’t feel the need to move again.
But until then, the road hums beneath me, and the sky keeps opening.
Rachel is an intrepid world traveller, lifestyle connoisseuse, and the resident beauty advisor at Girls Who Travel. A true ocean lover with a soft spot for flowers, films, and storytelling, she also has a growing collection of medium-sized tattoos. When she’s not immersed in her next adventure, Rachel shares stories from her travels along with practical tips and insights to help other women make the most of their journeys.
Very beautifully written Rachel