I am never traveling with my family again, unless...

I love traveling and I love my family. All I want is the two to mix. Reflections of an eldest daughter who is always the family trip planner.

“I am never traveling with my family again,” I say to myself to self-soothe after a phone call I wish went differently. My mom told me I sounded “stressed” when the family trip is supposed to be relaxing and a figure-it-out-as-you-go. I told her that I was stressed, because our international family trip to multiple countries (Thailand and Vietnam) was in less than a month and all we have booked is our roundtrip flights. We have no flights booked for within the countries, no accommodations, no excursions set, literally nothing. And I, as the eldest daughter, had taken it upon myself to plan an itinerary for my family to approve. Of course I was stressed.

She told me “no one asked you to.” And how “your stress is making me stressed.” To my mom, traveling just means going to a location and figuring it out. To me, that sounds unfathomable given that I had to get my time off of work approved by my corporate job to even go on this trip. Not knowing exactly what I would like to do at my destination after spending over twenty-four hours at multiple airports and flights to get there does not make sense in my head. The whimsical, go-as-I-please type of travel my mom is describing is not something that I can relate to, knowing that I am not sure when I will be able to afford both the time and the budget to freely travel without having an opinion of what I wanted to experience.

After the phone call, I realized what the trip might be like.