Solo travel · Expat life · Starting over
I didn’t leave because I was brave.
I left because staying felt worse than the fear of going. That was 2018. Eight years later, I’m still going and have zero regrets.
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At 38, my life looked fine from the outside.
Steady job. A relationship. An apartment. And this low-level, constant feeling that I was slowly disappearing inside all of it.
I was a receptionist in a job that had stopped meaning anything. I was in a relationship that had done the same. And somewhere along the way I had stopped asking whether this was really the life I wanted and started just getting through the days.
“One day I decided that staying felt worse than the fear of going. So I made a plan.”
I spent a year saving, planning, and quietly preparing. Then I handed in my resignation, sold everything I owned, and bought a one-way ticket. I gave myself one year to travel the world and figure out what came next.
That was 2018. I traveled through Southeast Asia and Europe, taught English in a school in Malaysia, and kept going long after that one year was up. Then COVID hit and I came home and spent ten months with family, waiting for borders to reopen.
When they did, I found an expat group on Facebook talking about living in Albania. A woman who was already living there had built a community around life in Saranda, a small beach town on the Ionian Sea I’d never heard of. I started following the group, got to know the community, made friends, and one of those friendships led to everything. Her boyfriend was a leasing agent. He found me an apartment. I sent a $100 deposit and bought a one-way ticket.
My family thought I had completely lost my mind.
I landed in Saranda and it felt right almost immediately. I’ve been here for over six years now. I have an apartment I love, a routine I enjoy, and a life that fits me better than anything I had before.
