On coming home after travelling: The Alice in Wonderland effect
By Lauren Klarfeld
Nov. 2015
It’s much pleasanter at home, when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole…” (Alice in Wonderland)
Published Dec. 2015 : Elephant Journal, Thought Catalog
Published Dec. 2015 : Elephant Journal, Thought Catalog
There is something exiting in buying a one way ticket to somewhere in the world, and not knowing when you’ll come back. Some kind of freedom of choice, in choosing for yourself when you’ve had enough of travelling, or when you’ve decided to drop your luggage somewhere and build a new home...
8 months ago I packed my bags and decided it was time to leave a place I took years to make friends in. This was my “home” and I had voluntarily decided to leave it. I told them I had no plan on coming back as I sold the last of my belongings and handed them my books – the only thing I couldn’t separate myself from.
I hadn’t decided to travel the world like some people I knew, but I had decided to change the way I led my life and change my priorities. I wanted to be a writer rather than an office clerk. So, like those very same travellers – I bought my first one-way ticket to somewhere away from home and got lost. Got scared. Got confronted with loneliness daily, but also discovered ways to deal with it and even to embrace it. It made me grow. And the amount of things I discovered on myself and humans in general was mind-opening. I felt I had taken a new view on freedom, and decided to start everything from zero as I left. The freedom in that was priceless as much as it was costly…
I knew I left because I wanted to take distance from the place I grew up in. Like a break in a relationship I simply needed some time apart, to be better for the future.
My first visit came after 3 months. I came to visit old friends, hug them, and try to relive old times. That day though, something felt off. I was more restless than usual, and I wasn’t sure how to talk to my friends anymore. I could barely look at them in the eyes – (and I still have that feeling 8 months in when I see them) because I was always scared they’d see how much I’d changed and call me up on it.
I realised I got myself stuck between two emotional tectonic plates. I hadn’t yet found a home yet – but I had already lost the one I knew. I felt like a geographical orphan.
As you’ve lived days if not months of travel and complete freedom to be and do what you please, free of material things, free to do eat at whatever time, free to go wherever you want to go, returning to a world that dictates how you should be is hard. Especially if your friends seem to be oblivious to it. As you come back, you’ll be looking for the same freedom and intensity you lived across the globe – because you gave yourself the freedom of it. But on your return, you will have grown too big for your old house, you’ll feel lost, unable to understand the differences between you and the others and you’ll want little by little to start distancing yourself from those that don’t understand what you have lived and grown into.
It’s not only that we change but it’s that the things around us haven’t grown with us. The feeling we have is much like when Alice in Wonderland drank the magic potion and her body grew too big for her own house, too big for her own good and it almost made her regret she hadn’t drank the potion in the first place:
“It’s much pleasanter at home, when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole…” (Alice in Wonderland)
When coming back, you’ll notice you will have changed because others haven’t. And some might even call you up on it and say “You’ve changed…” And you will be left with a bitter taste of having to accept it if you don’t want to end up alone…How ironic is seems, that you probably fought with loneliness during your travels, accepted it and finally conquered it, only to come back to the world you left behind, and have to battle with loneliness again…
But the truth is, it is up to the person coming home to make a choice – that of choosing his new home wisely – be it in the place he left, or a new place he is moving to – and make it welcoming. Even for the guests that don’t fit in it anymore.
Yes, moving is exhausting. You’ll have to clean up, arrange, sort and possibly throw away certain things. But this is when we need to remind ourselves perhaps that it is rarely the move in itself which is stressful – but that it is the stress of being stressed that drains us.
So maybe you are reading this while waiting for your plane to bring you back home – or maybe you are travelling or have moved abroad and are pondering to head back home…Then this is what I can tell you to expect: If you’ve gone to travel to have fun, you will most likely have no new choices to make. But if you have gone to travel to grow or have noticed that you have…then you are bound to have to make that choice – that of making a new home, and welcoming people in it regardless of how different they are from you – as you yourself will have changed too – and acceptance is the best you can do.
The old you has been left behind to leave place for the new you. And it will be a new you that your new friends will support, that your old friends will struggle to understand, and that your true friends will learn to embrace.
I hadn’t decided to travel the world like some people I knew, but I had decided to change the way I led my life and change my priorities. I wanted to be a writer rather than an office clerk. So, like those very same travellers – I bought my first one-way ticket to somewhere away from home and got lost. Got scared. Got confronted with loneliness daily, but also discovered ways to deal with it and even to embrace it. It made me grow. And the amount of things I discovered on myself and humans in general was mind-opening. I felt I had taken a new view on freedom, and decided to start everything from zero as I left. The freedom in that was priceless as much as it was costly…
I knew I left because I wanted to take distance from the place I grew up in. Like a break in a relationship I simply needed some time apart, to be better for the future.
My first visit came after 3 months. I came to visit old friends, hug them, and try to relive old times. That day though, something felt off. I was more restless than usual, and I wasn’t sure how to talk to my friends anymore. I could barely look at them in the eyes – (and I still have that feeling 8 months in when I see them) because I was always scared they’d see how much I’d changed and call me up on it.
I realised I got myself stuck between two emotional tectonic plates. I hadn’t yet found a home yet – but I had already lost the one I knew. I felt like a geographical orphan.
As you’ve lived days if not months of travel and complete freedom to be and do what you please, free of material things, free to do eat at whatever time, free to go wherever you want to go, returning to a world that dictates how you should be is hard. Especially if your friends seem to be oblivious to it. As you come back, you’ll be looking for the same freedom and intensity you lived across the globe – because you gave yourself the freedom of it. But on your return, you will have grown too big for your old house, you’ll feel lost, unable to understand the differences between you and the others and you’ll want little by little to start distancing yourself from those that don’t understand what you have lived and grown into.
It’s not only that we change but it’s that the things around us haven’t grown with us. The feeling we have is much like when Alice in Wonderland drank the magic potion and her body grew too big for her own house, too big for her own good and it almost made her regret she hadn’t drank the potion in the first place:
“It’s much pleasanter at home, when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole…” (Alice in Wonderland)
When coming back, you’ll notice you will have changed because others haven’t. And some might even call you up on it and say “You’ve changed…” And you will be left with a bitter taste of having to accept it if you don’t want to end up alone…How ironic is seems, that you probably fought with loneliness during your travels, accepted it and finally conquered it, only to come back to the world you left behind, and have to battle with loneliness again…
But the truth is, it is up to the person coming home to make a choice – that of choosing his new home wisely – be it in the place he left, or a new place he is moving to – and make it welcoming. Even for the guests that don’t fit in it anymore.
Yes, moving is exhausting. You’ll have to clean up, arrange, sort and possibly throw away certain things. But this is when we need to remind ourselves perhaps that it is rarely the move in itself which is stressful – but that it is the stress of being stressed that drains us.
So maybe you are reading this while waiting for your plane to bring you back home – or maybe you are travelling or have moved abroad and are pondering to head back home…Then this is what I can tell you to expect: If you’ve gone to travel to have fun, you will most likely have no new choices to make. But if you have gone to travel to grow or have noticed that you have…then you are bound to have to make that choice – that of making a new home, and welcoming people in it regardless of how different they are from you – as you yourself will have changed too – and acceptance is the best you can do.
The old you has been left behind to leave place for the new you. And it will be a new you that your new friends will support, that your old friends will struggle to understand, and that your true friends will learn to embrace.
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