Travel Ban Hurts: How I Learned to Accept What Is | Poem

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 the here and now lies my peace.