When Morocco became personal

I didn’t expect the north coast of Morocco to feel like a pause.

Not silence (never silence), but a kind of soft suspension. The kind where time doesn’t stop, but loosens its grip just enough for you to notice the space between moments. The Atlantic breathing in long, steady rhythms. The wind moving through streets that seem to remember more than they reveal. The light spilling over white walls and blue doors like it has nowhere else to be.

I spent my days there without urgency. Tea that cooled slowly in my hands. Walks that had no destination, only direction. Conversations that drifted in and out. Nothing demanded anything from me, and in that absence, something in me started to speak again. Just a quiet knowing: this is what it feels like when you’re not trying to force your life into shape.

And then I came back home...

Back to neat lines and schedules. To calendars that fill themselves if you look away for too long. To a version of life that is efficient, structured, and, lately, strangely suffocating. Nothing is wrong, exactly. That’s what makes it harder to explain. Everything works. Everything functions. And yet, somewhere underneath all that order, I feel a persistent restlessness. Like wearing a jacket that fits on paper but never quite settles on your shoulders. I think this feeling has been there since I returned from my world trip in 2023.

A year of movement does something irreversible. It stretches your sense of what is normal until “normal” itself becomes impossible to define. You learn how little you actually need. How many versions of yourself can exist, depending on where you are and who you’re with. You learn to trust the unknown. Not as something to fear, but as something that might hold you, if you let it.

Coming back felt, at first, like relief. Familiar language. Familiar streets. Familiar food. Seeing my brothers, my mother and my sister again. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, that relief turned into friction.

I tried to settle. I really did. I told myself this was what stability looks like. That not everything has to feel expansive. That life isn’t meant to constantly surprise you.

But then Morocco and a divorce happened.

And something clicked back into place (or maybe out of place). It reminded me of a version of myself that doesn’t fit into tight timelines. Someone who listens more than plans. Who follows a feeling instead of a five-step strategy. Someone who feels alive not when everything is certain, but when everything is possible.

Since coming back, the restlessness hasn’t left. If anything, it’s become clearer. Sharper. Less negotiable. It shows up in small moments. Sitting at my desk, feeling like I’m pretending to belong there. Looking at my calendar and wondering whose life I’m organizing. Walking through familiar streets that suddenly feel… distant. Like I’m visiting a place I used to live in, rather than actually living there.

But now I’ve stopped trying to silence that voice, because I think it’s trying to tell me something important.

So in June, I’m leaving again. This time, without a return date.

No big declaration. No dramatic escape. Just a quiet decision that has been building for months, maybe years. A decision that feels less like running away, and more like moving toward something I can’t fully see yet. There’s uncertainty in that. Of course there is, and it scares the shit out of me. But it’s a different kind of uncertainty than the one I feel here. It's desire.

I don’t know exactly where I’ll go, or how long I’ll stay, or who I’ll become in the process. But I will never forget how it felt on that coast in Morocco. The space. The softness. The love. The quiet certainty beneath everything else.

And for now, that’s everything I am asking for.

Love,

Sinem