By the time I was a teenager, two seemingly contradictory things had become fundamental parts of my identity: I was deeply anxious and I desperately wanted see the world.
As a child, I worried about trivial things, like whether the doors were locked or whether the taps weren’t running before I went to bed, to the heat death of the universe in trillions of years. At the same time, I was deeply fascinated by geography and history.
At fourteen I had already decided that I would do that visit any country in Europe before I died. When I had the opportunity to travel to Greece, Italy and France later that year, my obsession grew.
Strum’s trip to Greece, Italy and France was just the beginning of her obsession with travel. Provided by Macie Strum
The stakes increased with adulthood
As I got older, my anxiety didn’t go away. Worries about closed doors and running taps gave way to an obsession with relationships, careers, failure, success, and what my life should look like.
During difficult periods, I created hypothetical futures in my head and reacted as if they were already my reality. Therapy and medication helped, but I felt like I was just going through the motions. Once times got tough, I abandoned every healthy coping mechanism I had learned.
Traveling has always helped to relax that fear. I went away every school holiday and eventually moved to Rome in my early twenties to work as an au pair.
During that year in Italy, I felt so much better that I wondered if my anxiety had been miraculously cured.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. I wouldn’t realize that until I returned to the United States.
When I returned, I traded the aperitivo hour and a slow life for what was expected of me: a corporate travel job at a nonprofit in New York City and a mundane, predictable life. On paper, I did everything I thought I had to do.
Only one unexpected breakagea layoff and the stagnation I felt in my daily life sent my anxiety into a spiral. Somewhere between a grueling commute to work and sitting at a desk all day, I lost myself in constant catastrophes.
When I was fired After that second job at the end of 2023, I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. And four months later, after finding someone to take over the lease on my apartment and sell my furniture, I boarded a one-way flight to South Korea.
The baggage I carried wasn’t just physical
Leave the country and travel to Asia did not cure my anxiety. However, it did interrupt the way I was thinking. I began to accept that while fear could always be a constant in my life, it didn’t have to dictate the way I lived it.
One year of travel changed to two, and then three. As I traveled the world, I didn’t necessarily become less anxious. Instead, the cultures, people, and lifestyles I experienced taught me how to put my fears into perspective and finally use the coping mechanisms I had struggled to put into practice for years.
In Bali, Strum learned that the future does not have to be an abstract, open-ended destination. Provided by Macie Strum
New ways to combat spiral thoughts
In Bali, where I spent an entire month, a local explained that Balinese doesn’t use grammatical tenses like English does. She described her culture’s relationship with time as more cyclical than the straight line toward an unknown future I had always imagined.
This made me wonder why I spent so much time in a future that didn’t exist yet.
A trip to Kyrgyzstan continued to challenge my relationship with anxiety. As I traveled through the countryside on horseback, staying in nomadic yurt camps under starry skies, I came to appreciate this slow, nomadic way of life.
The families I met had their own concerns, but seeing people build meaningful lives around priorities so different from mine made me wonder why I was so afraid of building my life the wrong way.
Spending time in both Vietnam and Bosnia and Herzegovina has taught me how little control we have over what the future holds. Although both countries are known for their devastating recent histories, it wasn’t those tragic pasts that left a lasting impression on me. Instead, it was the humor, ambition, community, and hope I encountered in places that had rebuilt themselves from unfathomable circumstances.
I began to accept that while I had no control over what my future would bring, I could stop pretending that each setback would single-handedly determine the rest of my life.
Fear no longer determines how I live
I still catch myself thinking too much and obsessing over a future that hasn’t happened yet. But I’ve gotten much better at distinguishing between my reality and a fleeting, anxious thought.
Whenever I feel myself spiraling, I anchor myself in the present moment, shake off my outdated views of success, and accept that I may not always be able to predict the future.
At fourteen I dreamed of seeing the world simply because I was in love with it. At that age, I never expected that seeing so much of it would ultimately change the way I saw my own life.
Don’t travel heal my anxietynor do I replace the tools I have learned through years of therapy. Instead, it gave them a foundation that I had previously struggled to build – and taught me that I don’t need to know exactly what the future holds to enjoy the life I live now.
