I traveled alone and it was the worst

• Jamie Bradley, director of 25-year-old advertising, left her job to travel the world for a year.
• After only six weeks, she returned home after realizing how lonely she felt when she traveled without a companion.
• Bradley also learned how difficult it is to communicate with others while traveling and the annoyance of constantly having to plan your day.

When Jamie Bradley left her full-time job to travel the world solo, she was expecting a life-changing experience similar to "Eat Pray Love". She was expecting, at least, to experience exciting adventures in beautiful places, like the ones she sees on photos that clutter her Instagram account of travelers from around the world.

Instead, she has experienced what very few people talk about when they travel alone: ​​constant loneliness that can often spoil the whole trip.

Bradley, a 25-year-old director of New York advertising, faced this reality after leaving her job and decided to go around the world for a year in 2017. But after just six weeks, she returned home. she.

It started when Bradley began to feel dissatisfied with his job of selling ads and decided to consider other options.

"The idea of ​​looking for another job, where I would not have friends, no established direction and a lower salary, that seemed too daunting to know where to start," Bradley said. "This fear, coupled with the fact that I am very lucky to have saved a lot of money while working, helped me make the decision to travel the world instead of coming back directly to the market. work."

It would not be the first time Bradley would travel alone. Bradley did it briefly after graduation and fell in love with Southeast Asia. This time, however, she had planned to travel much longer – at least a year – and had decided to go to Africa on a wildlife preserve.

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This time she had also planned to leave her apartment in New York and get rid of almost everything she owned. In a few weeks, she spent all her life in a backpack.

"I was euphoric all the time, and I used the opportunity to tell people what I was doing – their look, their jealousy and their wonderment were reason enough," she said. "I felt brave and strong and indestructible."

But Bradley said that she remembered her changing attitude during her 20-hour flight to Africa.

"I remember being in the plane half way to Africa and a huge wave of loneliness mingled me," she said. "It seems to come from nowhere but it was in my chest like a weight and would not let go."

When she landed in Cape Town, the jet lag only added to her unusual feeling, leaving her "lethargic and a little depressed".

"I was so shocked by these feelings and I remember being embarrbaded to feel so negatively," Bradley said. "Where was this euphoria I had been feeling for weeks?"

Almost instantly, Bradley said that she knew that this trip would not be a quaint Instagram post or anything else.

"I would say that even before getting off the plane, I realized that the decision was much more complicated than the one I had originally planned," she said. "I saw how everyone could feel lonely.When I met new people and I knew a new culture every second, there was also nothing and no-one around them. me."

Read more:I've traveled solo in seven countries – here's my biggest advice so you can do it too

Realizing that these feelings could be a culture shock and a lack of fit, Bradley said he wrote a lot in his diary to make sense of his feelings and even turned to books "to satiate my chaotic mind and occupy my time.

At one point, she even flew from Africa to Europe, a last minute decision to meet friends and avoid loneliness. Although it helped, the feelings came back when her friends left and she arrived in Budapest alone.

"Sometimes I did not talk to one person several days at a time," Bradley said. "It was partly my fault for my isolation from the hostel culture, but I was tired of having the same conversation over and over again at my place of residence, on places where we travel and on the most mundane and adventurous secret competition. "

Bradley mentioned that it was difficult to connect with people who were just crossing countries, which only allowed him to make temporary connections. That left her, she said, feeling even more isolated.

Bradley has also struggled to plan something new and exciting every day.

"I was very upset, extremely lonely and I felt a wave of depression penetrating me so deeply that I spent five days in Budapest, including four inside my Airbnb, knitting, "Bradley said. "I found it exhausting to have to find something to do every second and find a new place to see – find out where it is, how to get there, and once you're there, look at it and go , without sharing the same experience with anyone. "

It was then that Bradley made the decision to go home for her sanity – only six weeks after the start of her trip.

"One of the worst aspects of the decision was the shame I felt," Bradley said. "I was ashamed of not being able to last, not to have done what I wanted to do at the start, I was embarrbaded by all the fuss I had when I left, I felt pathetic." , like a failure. "

When she finally returned to New York and that she slowly became acclimatized to work, Bradley regained her identity. Although she did not realize what she had originally set, Bradley said she would not consider her trip as a mistake.

"This has given me the strength to quit my job and has brought me to a new stage of my life where I'm not afraid of excessive responsibilities and a long term commitment . "

But she has learned that happiness has just come into question and come out of her comfort zone.

"All my life, I was so concerned about living an extraordinary life, and I thought I had to do it myself," Bradley said. "This trip has taught me that it is normal to need other people.It is courageous and powerful to hold yourself accountable to others and to allow yourself to be safe." To be vulnerable with them. "

Although her solo trip across Africa and Europe was not exactly as she had planned, she said it was all worth it in the end.

"I would never change this trip to the world," she said.