Deep, deep inside was my heart screaming and trying to reach its voice, but I tightly covered my ears and wandered about when having been depressed. Depression suddenly attacked and built a wall between me and my heart. And I lost sight of what I needed for being myself. I was 16.
I couldn't even get to know what attacked me and couldn't help covering my ears to protect from a further attack so that my heart's voice didn't reach to my ears. I looked for a hammer which should be strong enough to break the wall. I hung out and spent time with my friends, listened to music I liked or drank alcohol. However nothing could be a weapon to fight for me.
One day almost losing energy to find a way out of depression I set out on a trip. I was 17. I thought a new environment could do something for it. Yet, nothing did happen though I enjoyed sightseeing and talking to others. I traveled in Europe in the summer.
I withdrew full amount from my savings and I bought a plane ticket. And I set out on a journey to Europe.
After arriving at Paris, I walked along carrying my backpack which tipped the scale at 40 pounds. In the afternoon of that day I started to find a place to sleep. I checked the location of a youth hostel in a map and walked down to a subway station near Orsay Museum. While waiting a next train, I asked a man who just walked by to make sure that I wouldn't take a wrong train. He was kind enough to show which train I should take although he seemed to be in a hurry. When a train arrived and he got ready to ride on, I happened to ask him to let me stay his house for some nights. His answer was "Yes" after slight hesitation. Being in a hurry, he quickly told me where we should meet again and time, and he jumped in a train in a fluster.
To my deep regret, I don't remember his name. It was an unfamiliar name to me and I lost a paper written down his name and address when my another small back pack was stolen. The paper was in it.
He showed up at the appointed time and we went to his apartment at the foot of Montmartre. I stayed there for ten days and he let me use a spare key. During a day time, he went to work and I went sightseeing. In the night we chatted until midnight. However, nothing did break the blocking wall although I enjoyed staying in Paris and made a new friend.
One day, however, I finally found a breakthrough. It was a paper and a pen. As it became my routine to take a walk on the top of the hill in the evening, I walked up to the top and wandered around the place. It was still in the afternoon. I was walking around for hours in the summer sunshine and sought sanctuary in a church which, I knew, provided chairs, cool air and quiet. While I was sitting on a chair blankly, my family's faces flashed across my mind. Then I happened to take a pen and a paper out and started writing a letter to them.
I wrote about my travel schedule at first. And I described things I saw, people I met and what I felt then. I, not good at writing, wrote sentences and crossed them out repeatedly. While doing it over and over, I read what I was thinking and feeling, furthermore I saw feelings I didn't even notice since I got dispirited. Finishing writing and reading it, I finally took myself back and tears of relief covered my eyes.
I left Paris two days later. I became tougher and wanted to see another place.
He took me to the station to see off and told me that I could come back whenever I wanted. I took a night train to Frankfurt, Germany. I took a compartment. No one was sitting there.
Suddenly two young men opened the door and looked at me with eerie laugh. They were the same men who my French friend and I saw at the station. He told me that they used drugs and loitered around. They saw me glaring fiercely at them and shut the door.
In the midnight, the train kept making a roaring sound and running. I slightly fell asleep. Then the door opened without sound and a man came in. He was sitting on a chair opposite for a while and sat next to me. I knew that he was one of the men who used drugs so I could not help pretending to sleep and held tightly my small bag in my arms. The big bag was being under my legs. He reached his arm to my bag in my arms. Then I made slightly move as pretending to sleep when he tried to open one of pockets of the bag. He stood up quietly and left. Nothing did happen but it scared me. It was the first time to see drug addicts.
After he left, I woke up and turned the light on. Then I wrote a letter to some of my friends till the train got to the destination. I wrote down how I felt about what happened.
As soon as I arrived at Frankfurt, I walked to the Youth Hostel and checked in. There were five men in a room. There was a locker but I needed to buy a key. So I left my big bag and small bag on my bed and went to the front desk. After I returned to the room, my small bag was gone. And only two young men were in the room who seemed to travel together and were whispering and looking at me. I questioned them closely, however they seemingly couldn't speak English. I left the room.
Sitting desperately at a hotel's cafeteria, I didn't even feel like writing a letter. Actually I lost a pen and a paper because I had my stationery in that stolen small bag. I felt I lost everything. I even lost the reason of coming to Europe and regretted leaving my French friend. I just wanted to go back to where I had found the way of out of that feeling.
While I was thinking when I should go back to Paris, a woman walking towards me and talked to me with my most familiar language. She was a Japanese and also traveling around Europe alone. We chatted for a while and I explained what happened in the room and in the train and told her that I had a good French man in Paris. Then I said that I was thinking to back to Paris. I was expecting that she would say, "Yes, maybe you should stay with him until you get well." However it wasn't. She said, "No, you shouldn't go back."
Next day, she took me out to some places in Frankfurt. And I bought a new pen and papers. I wrote a thank-you letter to her.
I left Frankfurt for next city, Munich, Germany. I had some problems there, too. But I had already become stronger to solve them by myself. I wrote letters to someone I knew. In letters, I saw what I felt and how I faced to problems. Sometimes I could find how weak I was in letters. Or I could see how bravely I faced the problems. And those told me what to do next.
At other places I visited, so many things happened. Officers at Austria-Hungary border took me out of a train to Budapest. A drug addicted old man all of sudden ran toward me in Zurich, Switzerland. In Rome, an old woman took me to a bar to buy me a drink and a tall man in a black suit handed me a two hundred dollar bill. The old woman was an accomplice. However, I could remain unperturbed whatever happened after Frankfurt.
Maybe the problems I faced during travel were not the same one I had wanted to solve before I set out on a trip. However writing a letter every time something happened let me get into the habit of hearing what I felt and thought.
Before that, I had been looking for a hammer to break the wall, but it wasn't the solution. I needed to uncover my ears and listen carefully to what my heart was saying. A letter to someone I care about always has what I think or feel. At first I wrote a letter then by chance and listened to what my heart said without realizing.
Writing a letter may not be a solution of being depressed to all. However I took myself back in that way. I keep writing letters when being blue though I have seldom sent them to addresses.
