I Took My Problems to Turkey, Then I Went Paragliding
Sometimes you don't need to escape your problems. You just need enough distance to see them differently.
I Didn't Leave My Problems Behind
I've travelled a lot this year. After over ten years without setting foot outside the country, I have been to Costa Rica, Poland, France, and Ireland.
After years of living in a very small world of poor mental health, addiction, family breakdown and just general shite I really wanted to see the world. I wanted to have new experiences. I wanted to spend a bit of time seeing family and I wanted to get to know who I am again.
But I've had a genuinely crap few months. My sons' dad died, which has been devastating, and I've had stress piled on top of stress. A lot of it has been to do with social services and my children. I won't go into all that for various reasons.
Now is not the time...
So I came to Turkey to escape. Not in some grand, carefully planned journey of self-discovery. I genuinely just needed wanted to get away. I wanted sunshine, a pool, a change of scenery and some time where I didn't have to deal with everything waiting for me at home.
Except, obviously, my brain came with me.
You can get on a plane and leave your surroundings behind, but you can't leave your problems sitting in the departure lounge of Manchester Airport.
Then I Went Up Into the Sky
I was still ruminating about everything. At one point, I burst into tears sitting in the hotel restaurant.
The problem with getting stronger is that people think you can handle any amount of shit they throw at you. Eventually, even the strongest person will break. I haven't gone back to my old destructive ways of coping. I haven't even been tempted, in all honesty. But carrying such an emotional burden is a lot for anyone to take.
Then, on my second night, I was sitting by the pool, soaking up the sun and wondering why the hell I had come so far just to feel exactly the same way, just further away, when I looked up and saw dozens of paragliders floating down to the ground. It was beautiful.
And obviously, me being me, I thought "I'll have a bit of THAT".
So that was that. I decided to go paragliding.
I'm not known for thinking things through, once I have an idea in my head, there isn't much that will stop me. Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I'd booked it, paid for it, and it only really hit me as I was trundling up the mountain in a van with six other nutters.
I'm not going to pretend I was fearless. I absolutely wasn't. Standing there looking out over the mountains, knowing that in a few moments I was going to run off the edge of one of them, I definitely had a few what the actual hell am I doing? thoughts.
The worst bit was standing on top of the mountain when I wasn't attached to anything. The instructor had to drag pull me gently towards the edge.
But I did it.
And once we were in the air, something strange happened.
My brain went quiet.
Not completely. It wasn't silent up there. There was the wind, the movement of the paraglider and the incredible view stretching out below me. But the constant noise in my head wasn't there. No worrying. No analysing. No trying to work out what happens next.
Just... being there.
A Different Kind of Peace
For the first time in a long time, I wasn't thinking about everything that had gone wrong. All the things I should have done differently. What's going to happen in the future? I was thinking about the good things. I looked down at the mountains, the sea and the tiny little world below me and suddenly felt very aware of just how big the world is — and how small we are within it. And strangely, that didn't make my problems feel bigger.
It put them into perspective.
I thought about my little boys' dad. It was his funeral day when I went paragliding, and somehow, being up there gave me a kind of peace I hadn't expected. I thought about the good times we'd had rather than everything surrounding his death — the hurt and pain, and how badly things turned out.
I know that he'd been thinking about recovery, but it was too late for him. But it's not too late for me. It's not too late for our children. I can tell the boys how much he loved them.
I wasn't able to go to his funeral, it wouldn't have been appropriate, but I said "Goodbye" in my own way up there. And I know that if he could see me, he'd want me to keep going for the boys. He'd want me to live.
He'd also say I'm a complete fucking nutter, and he wouldn't be wrong.
I couldn't change what had happened. I couldn't fix everything waiting for me at home. But up there, for those few minutes, I could remember the good stuff.
And maybe that's what I had actually needed.
Not to forget. Not to escape forever. Just enough distance to breathe.
So What Do I Do When I Get Home?
Clearly, I've discovered that adrenaline is my new drug of choice, and I need to go paragliding in Ölüdeniz every time life gets too much. Or maybe zip-lining in Costa Rica every time I'm overwhelmed.
No, as much as I'd like to.😂
The real lesson isn't that I need to keep running away to increasingly ridiculous places whenever life gets difficult. Although Volcano Boarding in Nicaragua is defo on my bucket list!
It's that I need to create some distance before I reach a breaking point.
Something I need to remember when I get home is that distance doesn't always have to mean something dramatic. Sometimes I might need the excitement of doing something new, getting an adrenaline fix, or going somewhere that pulls me completely out of my own head. But sometimes I might need to just STOP, put my phone down, and be still. To have an hour where I'm not fixing, worrying, or dealing with everyone else's shit.
I think I've spent a lot of my life waiting until things become unbearable before I do anything about how I'm feeling. I push through. I cope. I tell myself I'm stronger than this. I carry a bit more, and then a bit more, until eventually, I'm carrying so much that even getting through an ordinary day feels exhausting.
Maybe strength isn't about how much shit I can keep carrying. Maybe sometimes strength is recognising when the load is getting too heavy and putting some of it down.
I can't always change what's happening around me. I can't control other people's decisions. I can't undo what's happened. I can't make difficult situations disappear. But I can create moments of distance.
I can go for a walk without my phone; I can get outside; I can go to (even more) gigs and festivals. I can paint, I can sit somewhere beautiful, I can spend time with people who make me feel like myself. I can do something I've never done before. I can give myself permission to have a day where I'm not solving anything.
And perhaps most importantly, I can learn to notice when I'm carrying too much before I reach the point where I break.
I don't need to wait for a holiday. I don't need a mountain. I don't need to be thousands of feet above the ground. I just need to remember that distance can be created in lots of different ways.
Sometimes it might be physical. Sometimes it might be emotional. Sometimes it might simply be taking an hour out of a difficult day and saying, I'm not dealing with this shit right now. I'll come back to it when I have a bit more space.
I came to Turkey thinking I needed to escape my problems. I think what I've actually learned is that I need to stop allowing my problems to take up all of the space because my life is bigger than what's going wrong in it.
There is still university and work. There are challenges with my boys, and there is grief. There are things I still don't know how to deal with.
But there is also travel, new experiences, sunshine, belly-laughs, cuddles with my children, playing with my kittens, things I've yet to discover and people yet to meet.
And hopefully, a lot more life.
I don't think I needed to escape.
I needed to remember that there is a whole world outside my problems.
And sometimes, I just need enough distance to see it.