It’s been a year since I picked up my tiny van, cheesily named Aphra Van, after Aphra Behn, the first white English woman to make a living with her writing. A name chosen on my first drive as a kind of omen to myself or perhaps rather an expression of a hope I have. If someone had told me, after the first week of driving, in which I’d burst a tyre and made myself so anxious about every drive and every windy road, that I’d look back on this time nostalgically, I’m not sure I would have believed them. I hated it some days. The responsibility and having to constantly pay attention. I often felt as though I was just ticking things off a list or as though I was doing this whole thing for someone else. Who? I didn’t know then and I don’t now. Mostly, though, I felt as though I was supposed to be happy, that I somehow deserved to be happy but I wasn’t.
I didn’t feel miserable all day, every day, in those first weeks, and yes, it was weeks, but I felt bad enough of the time that I shamed myself about feeling miserable. A wonderful spiral if ever there was one. The change came when I allowed myself to feel bad and slowly found a rhythm that suited me, a balance between driving and breaks, a slower pace and time to just aimlessly stare at the sea.
I always need time to aimlessly stare at the sea.
I still remember the moment when the knot in my chest loosened. I was sitting under a canopy of trees on a cliff on the southern end of Kaiteriteri Beach, people walked past me but I just sat and watched the boats in the bay. I could still feel the „should“, the „you should do more“ but I’d stopped caring.
Now, as I’m relying on buses and trains and find myself constantly checking timetables, I miss the freedom of moving around aimlessly and being able to have my own space with an order I could establish and then maintain for the length of my trip. I remember the first time I overtook another car on my way from Nelson to Picton. Driving no longer cost me so much energy, therefore I had the mental space to overtake another car, to know that I had the skills to do it. I realise how silly this sounds but when basic things cost you so much mental energy, „excessive“ things, like taking risks, become insurmountable challenges. Now, a year later, I realise that it’s not silly and that there might be a diagnosable reason for it.
The reason all of this popped into my mind this week, aside from the timing, is that I got talking to someone at a hostel in the middle of a rain storm the other night. It was one of those conversations where you bypass all the getting-to-know-you chit chat and go straight to the heart of things and the universe. We talked about a million topics but among them was the importance of allowing ourselves to feel the whole spectrum of emotion, the good and the bad. We both agreed that while it would be nice to feel happy 24/7, feeling the breadth and depth of emotion makes you a much more well rounded and empathetic human. How else would you relate to someone’s suffering if you denied yourself the entirety of feeling?
During these last 2 weeks of travel, I’ve had what I craved while I was alone in my van, deep conversations with fascinating people but it was also too much. I missed my own space and the hours I’d spent driving, singing along to music loudly and off-key, and going through all of the thoughts that are in my head. I guess I haven’t quite found the balance yet between connection and alone-time, maybe that’s impossible, I don’t know.
Gosh I love this x