This morning on one of our regular walks through the chaotic streets of Hanoi, we sat and drank Vietnamese coffee by the lakeside and I pondered, Who on earth would have guessed this was where I’d find myself at forty?
Squeezing into too-tiny chairs on the footpath (equally a hallmark of this city’s charm, and a cause for dread about the subsequent back-ache I’ll experience) and sipping our cà phê sữa đá, I notice a lot of older, Western faces passing by. There’s no shortage of them in Hanoi. For a fleeting moment, my subconscious sparks with a tiny jolt of joy and recognition. Is that someone like me? Is this another middle-aged habitual nomad, calling Hanoi home for a few weeks or months? Have they tried the bun cha yet?
But almost invariably, they’re clad in Holiday Dad attire: Lots of khaki, a large camera lens, Quechua backpack, chunky sneakers with pulled-up socks, a bucket hat, board shorts, and a vest adorned with several dozen pockets. Sure indicators that they’re tourists, and are not doing this 365 days a year. Soon enough, they’ll head back home to the States, London, or somewhere in Western Europe. They’ll make cups of tea in a years-old kettle with its chipped enamel finish, then sit on the couch and pour through endless snaps of their trip. They’ll tend to gardens that have been neglected for a few weeks, pick weeds, and sprinkle fertiliser. They’ll thank the neighbours for taking the bins in and collecting the mail, the way they always do.
As little as I subscribe to the idea of predeterminism, I’m about as unlikely a suspect for full-time travel as there could be. My parents had divorced by the time I was five. I grew up between a series of council houses and a friend’s rural trailer in a middle-of-nowhere, peanut-growing town in Queensland, Australia. We didn’t have a car half the time. The other half of the time, we didn’t have carpet. I don’t think those two things were necessarily mutually exclusive — you can have a car or carpet, but never both — but that’s roughly the divide of the ‘something regular families have but you’re missing’ that I remember.
We must have moved more than ten times while I was at school. Many of those moves were because of a breakup with Mum’s latest boyfriend. The rest, because we simply couldn’t pay the rent. I say ‘we’ like I had anything to do with it. More often than not, it felt as though we were on the brink of homelessness. I don’t think I was in a heightened state of awareness about it during those childhood years, but I’m sure it played on my still-developing mind; The idea that no one is to be trusted (least of all my mother or the latest man in her life), nothing is for certain (most notably, a roof over our heads), and that just when you’ve gotten comfortable enough to start hanging your tie-dyed sheets in the backyard mango trees to build a fort, everything can change. New suburb, new room, fewer trees, and a fresh set of neighbours to scope out.
My mum did have some idea of the effects these moves had on my young self. For all her faults, she at least tried to be thoughtful (if not equitable) in the allocation of bedrooms in each new home. Once, my brother got assigned the outrageous pink bedroom on the dark side of the house because “the yellow room has more light” and apparently, I would shrivel like a sunflower in the shade. I’m not sure he ever forgave me for that. Fair cop.
I’m still not sure my mum has ever been on a plane. We weren’t a travelling family. Not unless you count ferrying between broken homes on Christmas Day, where someone is always angry that you’re late, while the other side of the family is resentful that you’ve left before the Christmas cake comes out. It’s a lot for a kid to take on, emotionally. Never mind constantly having to make new friends. To just have to say goodbye to them again.
People have called me outgoing and even extroverted at times. Not always kindly. They assume it’s the case because I can walk into any room and find someone to talk to. I might even be at the centre of a group, all of whom are laughing uproariously at the jokes I’m making, if I’m in fine form. Or else I’ve started an argument with someone over feminism, or the current refugee crisis, or gun laws (much to Jason’s chagrin). But I hate labels like ‘extrovert’ because they belie the truth.
‘Social butterflying’ is a trauma response. At least in my case. A defence mechanism. Like talking too fast when you’re nervous. I do it because I’ve always had to. It’s automatic. It doesn’t mean I like it. These days, just the thought of having to interact with a new group of people is more likely to send me into a mild panic attack than have me reaching for my favourite ‘going out-out’ outfit (few and far between, when you travel for a life). But you’d never know it to look at me, I think. Smile, make jokes, be over-confident, laugh, repeat. Then panic (quietly), leave, cry a little, and sleep for two days if at all possible.
I can’t honestly say I always dreamed of travel, because it frankly wasn’t on the cards. Not when I was a kid, anyway. Like dreaming of winning the Man Booker Prize — people did that kind of thing, but not my people. It wasn’t until my 30s that I realised it was a possibility, just like writing was a possibility. People didn’t write for a living, nor did they travel full-time — not if you asked anyone, absolutely anyone, when I was growing up. So, when I finally made a decent living doing the thing I love most (a long story for another time), it gave me the freedom to pack my bags and do the other thing I’d never imagined was possible: Travel. Without having to return home. Pull the weeds. Thank the neighbours. Go back to a soul-crushing day job. Ever.
I don’t think I decided to travel because I wanted to meet new people. Mostly, it was escapism. Just like building a purple tie-dyed bedsheet fort in the yard, travel gave me the chance to dive into the storybooks I’d read when I was little, and create my own reality. If a place doesn’t live up to rose-tinted expectations, I can (and do) simply pack up and try somewhere new. It’s an incredible privilege (I have the elder-millennial compulsion to always mention that), but it’s not without its difficulties for me. Not least of which is a crippling fear of flying. (The irony would be hilarious if it wasn’t so terrifying.) And that’s not the only challenge.
My social anxiety has gotten worse since I started travelling full-time. I don’t honestly know why that is, despite putting a good deal of thought into it. A therapist might have a theory or two about it, I’m sure. Is it anxious burn-out of my overworked, internal social engine? Getting older and more curmudgeonly, maybe? Covid? Dwindling reserves of serotonin as I approach middle age, perhaps. Is that a thing? Do the happy hormones dry up over the years, like ovaries? I’ve switched from buying oil-controlling face creams to having perpetually dry skin. I worry about things like melanoma, bowel disease, and whether I’m old enough to qualify for free breast cancer screening. So, who knows? Age almost certainly has something to do with it. It turns a lot of things on their heads.
Perhaps it’s also because I don’t meet many middle-aged travellers out there for the long haul. The hefty majority of folks doing this kind of nonsense year-round and year-on-year are on the younger side of thirty, and I regularly remind myself — half in jest and half in self-loathing — that I’m old enough to be their mother.
I’ve fulfilled that prophecy, I suppose. The one about being homeless. Predeterminism or not, it was certainly a strong possibility with an upbringing like mine. I’m never without a roof over my head, but I’m equally, consistently, without a home. I’m always running towards something new, as much as I’m running away from what came before.
Social anxiety and my myriad of phobias aside, it’s what I choose to do. I travel full-time. Someone once told me that, in itself, is a trauma response. No argument from me.
Warmly,
Maggie
Loved reading this. Happy to have found you here (via unimpressed cat).
This is beautiful and I am jealous. I am 40 and have done a bit of travelling and lived in five countries, but I'm dreaming constantly of doing what you are doing.