I’m a traveler and had been on the road for over a year.

However, travel restrictions caused by COVID-19 made it impossible for me to move on with my trips.

I decided to stay in Mexico and listened to my intuition instead of the voices outside. While I often doubted my decision, I am still happy to be here.

This year, it’s been an emotional roller-coaster of a different kind, and now, more than ever, I had to learn to bring myself back to the present moment—back from the fearful “what-ifs.”

Below is a journal entry from a day during the pandemic in Mexico, after the country had been in lockdown for several months:

I want to leave.
I want to break free from the sameness,
the lostness, the fighting,
the avoiding, the hiding.
I want to leave, but I don’t know how.

I want to break free
from the cycle of shy hopes lighting up,
then being crashed down to the ground.

I feel small, in a cage.
And all the anger and rage,
they don’t help.

So I hold my mind gently
and carry my fears patiently.
I commit to accept
and sit in my cage with it.

I repeat those words to myself,
and I drag myself out, to see:
I am still here.

The sky, the sun, and the trees;
they help me to breathe,
and again, I repeat:
One day, I will leave,
but now I am here.

Now nothing else.
Now and today.
Now in this place.

In my here and now lies the peace.

~