It is okay not to be okay!
I am scared to go.
To be honest: I am very scared to go.
To be honest: I have never been so scared to go.
I am home since 6 weeks.
6x7=42: I am home since 42 days.
I have talked about how my perception, feelings, and emotions toward my home changed as a consequence of the pandemic.
The comfort, the peace, the relax I found at home are incommensurable.
I have a flight to come back to the UK in 2 weeks.
If I think about it, I panick.
If I think that from the Uk I will move to Kenya for 6 months, I panick even more.
When I was a kid, I was so shy and introvert! (believe it or not!). My mum did me a prank, convincing me that she was sending me off to some holiday house with other kids for the summer. I though I was gonna die by being without her.
I am not sure it is normal to have almost 27 years and to be scared to leave their home - well, unless you are an Italian man, and then that's normal :-)
It is certainly not normal for me, who always approached new trips and travel with enthusiasm.
This time I am scared. I may have become a "mammona", I may have enjoyed too much the snow and the good weather at home, I may be gone a bit spoiled with Italian culinary treats.
In this year of Pandemic, I learned a very important thing: we need to be kind with ourselves.
If you are doing a PhD, you will hear this sentence so many times, in so many occasions where someone will be talking about "your wellbeing".
Whatever it is, that it is scaring me, which I honestly think it is much else than the above mentioned spoiling home treats
e.g.
- travelling in a Pandemic
- disruption of flights
- additional logistics and various travel burden (covid test, quarantine, etc)
- risk of get covid
- fear of feeling lonely in a new country
- anxiety about a new context and its habits
- anxiety about "Africa"
- worries that I will be stigmatised for being white (and thus a carrier of the virus)
- overwhelming feeling of taking care accurately of health and safety measures
- ...
...I was saying, whatever it is, which is scaring me, IT IS OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY!
and we should all be allowed to feel stressed, anxious, and worried about travelling during a pandemic.
Especially, it is okay not to be okay after an extraordinary year of worries and preoccupations, of insecurity, changes, trauma, and exhausting lack of perspectives.
It is okay not to be okay, and to be worried. No one should have nothing to show/demonstrate to anyone except to themselves.
I hope all will be fine, and that this new trip will be great.
But my main wish is that I will always be able to bear in mind to be kind with myself, and to also allow myself the humanity, weakness, discouragement, and fears which we all experience as humans!
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