I sat out the front of my bosses office absolutely terrified.
Not that she was a terrifying person, but for the first time in my life I was about to put everything on the line. Sure I had been talking about this for months now, the ideas and scenarios going back and forth in my mind, but I had never gone through with it. I always had an excuse.
I took a deep breath before I spoke. "I'm resigning. I'm not happy here anymore and I plan of travelling the world to work out who the hell I am."
She was surprisingly okay with my decision. Working in children's cancer, I expect that this isn't the first time this conversation had happened to her, we get burnt out easily, we watch families go through the worst things that could possibly happen to them. She asked me "Does this have anything to do with the ward?"
"No, not at all" I reassured her that the need to leave came from within me. It was a need to get out of this place though, A few weeks before this conversation, I had been diagnosed with PTSD, something that I had brought back to Australia with me when I returned from working in the Middle East. Every night the nightmares of things that I had experienced over there crippled me and I didn't think that my usual method of working through it and soldering on were going to save me this time. This time, I needed to leave all of the comforts that I had been craving 6 months ago living in the desert. I needed to start accepting everything that I had seen and experienced and I need to loose myself in an effort to find myself.
Of course once I had officially resigned, I was on a high. I went straight online and opened up a search engine for flights. I had absolutely no idea where to go, do I go overseas with the intent of travelling or working, perhaps volunteering. Do I stick to the beaten path, nice resorts with all inclusive breakfasts or do I loose myself in jungles and treehouses. As i stared at the website I realised that already I had started to make plans, trying to control what little I had. This wasn't the way I wanted to find myself. My plan was to lose myself physically and mentally. So I went and bought myself a one way ticket to Colombo Sri Lanka, and paid for the first two nights at a hostel. The rest is up to chance and a good deal of liquor and creativity.
This is my story
