"Rediscovering the Erotic"

For the last few months, I have been thinking about moving abroad after I graduate from college and since I came back form my spring break trip to Jamaica, the idea has gone from something I think might be "fun" and has become something I must do, something I must experience.

I have talked about this need to move and travel and get out of America to a few of my friends and a couple strangers. Some of them understand and some don't. I have been looking for a way to explain what is becoming a burning desire within me and no matter how I tried I just couldn't find the words to really get others to see why I wanted to go or why going to Jamaica made me want to move to London even more until I came across an article while browsing through Clutch Magazine.

In the article, the writer described travel in a sense I never thought of -- the "erotic".

This erotic she's talking about is not to be confused with western pornographic connotations, where we think of sex with no emotion-- the act without the feeling. The erotic she is talking about has everything to do with emotion and feeling and being aware of everything around you, not just in sex but in every aspect of life. It's about a kind of openness that many of us never feel because we refuse to leave our comfort zones even for a short period.

This is what I felt in Jamaica.

I went to Jamaica when I was a kid but this is my first real adult experience with travel. I felt such a sense of freedom while I was there. Not just because I was on vacation but because I was so open to the people, the food, the culture -- everything.

The last time I went, it was just to visit family and I was an uninterested 16-year-old. This time, at 22, I enjoyed my time like you wouldn't imagine. I didn't let fear get in the way of experience. I can't swim, but I threw on a life jacket and hopped on a jet ski for the first time. It was amazing! The guy who owned it told me it could go to 60 mph so I was determined to hit 60. I made it go to 63, and felt so free and powerful all at once. It was amazing.

I laid on the beach, I drank daiquiris and pina coladas, and whatever fruity drinks I could find, I ate things I can't find in Tallahassee, I went out, I danced with strangers and I let go of everything that burdens me in Tallahassee and experienced my erotic -- a self love and self awareness that I rarely get the time to think about here. And every day I was told that I was beautiful. It was wonderful.

I am a creative spirit. I like being able to be spontaneous, but I think my spontaneity has become a casualty of my college experience and random failed relationships, where routine eventually stifles my personality. I don't even write poetry anymore!

I'm sad because I know I have missed out on so many friendship and opportunities to meet and know people because I chose working over living. That is something I want to change if at all possible in my last year in college. I want to be open to new things and new people. I want to do what I want, when I want -- not just on that half day a week I get off work. 

I don't even know if you can really understand what I'm saying here unless you have traveled and have gotten the chance to really feel what I felt but it's a feeling like no other. Before I went to Jamaica someone that was very important to me disappeared from my everyday and I was in a sad place but the happiness I felt in Jamaica brought me back. It was like I forgot I could feel like that and now that I have been reminded I want that kind of happiness forever and always.

I don't know if it's necessary to go abroad to feel like this but that's where I felt it and that's where I plan to seek it again.

Surrounded by the unfamiliar, I think, may just be the best place for me to get to know myself and rediscover my erotic.

 -Desi.