Somewhere up in the air, coming back to Vienna. I’m fully kaputt. The trip was exhausting, and I need time to digest it and make sense of it. It was chaotic, very much so, and so was I. Reading my own “before” journal entry feels like watching the first ten minutes of a movie where the protagonist is glowing with optimism, a fresh bob cut, and inspired by the film she just watched (The Eight Mountains, 2022) and thinking about all the places in the world she wants to visit and write from. And now I’m just shouting at the screen: “Don’t go to Andalusia, Sama! Stay away from the K1!” Little did I know that, as I sit here suspended between geographical zones, clouds, and seas, I would be in for a very different kind of “woah”. I’m so ready to go home.
There were many beautiful moments there too, but I’m sorry that I can’t quite see them from where I am right now. There is a lot to unpack from this trip, and I need to let go of the friction between what I expected and what actually happened. I have to stop asking what went wrong.