Self Care and Sanctuary Abroad: Why I Couldn’t Blog About My Trip

Although I’ve been back in the country for about a month, I couldn’t blog about my experience as promised. My trip to Tokyo and Seoul was absolutely amazing. This thought provoking piece reposted by Travel Noire gives beautiful parallels and stark contradictions to what I felt while abroad.

Exploring Sensoji temple, an ancient Buddhist temple in Asakusa, Tokyo.

“[F]or me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home,” Pico Ilyer writes. “We travel, then,” he says, “in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home.”

I cannot speak for all Black American travelers, but my trip was a welcome refuge from the moral and political urgencies and very real life-and-death dilemmas we all too often face in this country. In the temporary sanctuary of travel, I abandoned my twoness and pursued my happiness in a way I’ve never done in a country where that freedom is assumed to be universal.

I wore what I wanted. Converse and maxi skirts and my recently thrifted leather jacket. Polka dots and knee socks and one of my favorite Goodwill finds. Good ole Plain Jane jeans and a tshirt. This may seem trivial, but as a fundraiser my day-to-day wardrobe is typically much more limited.

Outside the National Folk Museum of Korea inside Gyeongbokgung Palace.

I said what I wanted. I observed and commented on the impact of Eurocentrism and colonialism in Japan and Korea. At meals, I spoke freely about the influence of Western culture without coded language or a hushed tone. I vented my frustrations and exclaimed my joys. I said exactly what I meant without mincing my words for fear of being typecast.

Making new friends in Itaewon while visiting Seoul.

I did what I wanted. I ate. Oh, did I eat- more on that later. I drank. I danced. I sang karaoke for three hours- pretty terribly. I read. I indulged in a massage and shower. I walked aimlessly. When my friends scheduled a tour of the Demilitarized Zone  between North and South Korea, I opted instead to visit  Gyeongbokgung Palace, the National Folk Museum of Korea, and Jogyesa Temple.

Friends want to tour the demilitarized zone btwn North + South Korea. Me: "I didn't fly cross the world to see the white man's colonialism."

— Kayla C. Elliott, Ph.D. (@kaylaCelliott) April 17, 2015

Simply put: I figured out just what it means to be a #carefreeblackgirl. To live beyond the white gaze. To put aside the mask. To live and move and have my being unencumbered by my twoness or double consciousness or whatever you want to call the constant burden of balancing your Blackness with your citizenship in a Eurocentric country that does everything to tip the scale.

Learning to make kimchi, a traditional Korean dish of fermented lettuce with fish sauce, ,scallions, daikon, and spices.

My flight into New York placed me back in the United States and, consequently, back into the double consciousness W.E.B. DuBois described more than 100 years ago. It is no wonder he chose to live out his last days abroad. I’d seen Freddie Gray’s name on Twitter the few times I logged in. The heinous details of his murder at the hands of Baltimore police became more clear when I returned. While Freddie Gray lay dying, I was enjoying my escape abroad. I couldn’t blog about my beautiful, restful and trip when all eyes and ears needed to be focused on the ugliness and unrest in Baltimore. I couldn’t blog about the trip because I felt guilty for enjoying it. I enjoyed not having phone service or regular access to social media. I enjoyed the space to selfishly think and be and feel.

I’m pretty sure this was snapped during my new but not at all improved version of Natural Woman.

I spent a few days in DC working, adjusting to eastern time, and hanging with my significant other. That weekend, we attended the 2015 Broccoli City Festival. I smiled at the care free Black girls I saw in their combat boots and frohawks and blue lipstick. One carefree Black girl struck me the most: Willow Smith. I don’t know much about the Smith kids as people or artists, but from what I’ve read and observed, they seem to be free thinkers who approach the world with autonomy and confidence.

My main thoughts after Willow and Jaden performed were: 1. Man are they talented 2. And man are they FREE.

— Kayla C. Elliott, Ph.D. (@kaylaCelliott) April 26, 2015

Say what you will abt them being weird but Will and Jada seem to have raised some liberated little souls.

— Kayla C. Elliott, Ph.D. (@kaylaCelliott) April 26, 2015

Trying on traditional Hanbok clothing as a part of a Korean cultural tour.

And so I returned to Jacksonville, full of conflicting feelings and in search of the words to write this post. “[T]ravel spins us round in two ways at once,” Ilyer writes, “It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit.”

A few days ago, I stumbled on  this For Harriet piece that was published the day after I returned from Tokyo. I love the author’s commitment: “I no longer allow myself, or anyone else, to make me feel guilty for calling a time-out when I know I don’t have it in me to take on the world.”

I am blogging about my trip now because I too have made a commitment to myself. I will continue to stand for justice while prioritizing my self care and happines. I will maintain the inward passages I discovered on my trip so they do not rust. I will dress and say and do what I want more frequently. And I will do my best to be carefree and guilt-free through it all.