I’ve begun various narratives about my trip to Europe and either deleted them or kept them in the drafts file. I’m finding it hard to write the whole story of that experience and what it meant to me. Having been burned a bit by storytelling–especially the impulse to create a tidy, pretty narrative out of something that’s complex or messy…it just isn’t working for me right now. While my trip wasn’t necessarily messy, it was complicated–I traveled with the intention of letting myself experience many things. I pushed my comfort zones. I traveled by saying YES and not letting fear stand in my way. I traveled to make new memories to replace some painful ones. And the trip was all of those things, as well as a wonderful way to mark my 40 years of life (happy birthday to me!). It was utterly unforgettable, and deserves all of the flowery adjectives and adverbs that I’d like to attach to my descriptions of it. But it was also a bit indigestible and my attempts to create a cohesive story of it have failed, or they just don’t say what I want them to–they don’t even come close to being as intense or as real as what I experienced as I traveled.
So I think I may have reached the limits of my storytelling capacity with this segment of my journey. Or perhaps…I’m learning that some things are simply better left unsaid?
