A Midlife Crisis

A few weeks ago I started joking that I was having a midlife crisis and wanted to go backpacking around Europe this Summer.

It really was a joke, the last thing I wanted to do was stay in a load of Hostels on my own, wearing last week's knickers and trying to converse in a language that I was unfamiliar with, whilst trying to pretend that I wasn't a 43-year-old woman having a midlife crisis.

Only the more I joked about it, the more I started wanting to go and realising that actually, this want for an adventure, teamed with the loss of my Mum earlier this year probably is a midlife crisis and if I treated it as a period of growth, that maybe I could come out the other side a better person.

There were two things that swung my decision to go.

The first was that Flyfour thought it was a great idea. It would be a time for me to go off and do something adventurous, something different and as at this current moment in time we're in an okay place financially and who knows what is going to happen later this year, it might be my only chance to do it.

The second was a friend at work, Cara, who has been travelling a lot! She has encouraged me to go on this trip, sending me links, and ideas and just generally being my guru.

As she isn't going to read this (or anybody else for that matter!) I can be more open than if I thought someone was going to read this by saying that she has honestly saved me from myself and pulled me back from the brink on several occasions these last five months or so and I don't think she is even aware of it.

I think that, without it being verbalised, she knew I needed this time to work out how to be me without the safety net of my Mum and despite being an "overachieving-people-pleasing-idiot who is trying to put off a mental breakdown until the summer when I wouldn't be at work" she could see the signs and knew that it's been happening for a few months so this time alone would do me the world of good.

It's been because of our many conversations that I've realised that backpacking across Europe would give me some time alone, which I don't really get at home with volunteering, working and my family (who I adore!) being my focus.

It would be a time for me to reconnect with myself and my emotions.

A time to grieve. 

A time to regain (or actually get) some of the confidence that I pretend to have.

So this Friday, I'm leaving the UK and going to visit 8 countries in 11 days (well 9 countries if you count the UK) cramming a gap year into just under two weeks and hoping that I don't get murdered or find myself on a train going in the wrong direction to where I'm supposed to be going.

Heaven Help Europe!