In Praise of Quitting

In the end it was the Dengue fever that got me, but it had been a while coming. I’d just arrived in a tiny Mexican village near the Pacific ocean and I was volunteering at an eco-resort, the kind of place that runs on solar power and organic sprouts. I was planning to spend the next month growing food and rescuing baby turtles and, with any luck, awakening within myself a passion for this type of work. I was staying in a house shared by four other volunteers, a simple cinder block place with no hot water, curtains for doors, a few beds and a handful of wicker chairs in various stages of collapse. It was basic, but liveable and, if I’m honest, not the worst place I’d stayed.

I spent my first workday digging holes for fruit trees, sweating under the morning sun, my hands blistering within minutes. By the time we knocked off work at one in the afternoon I was exhausted, but in a positive mood. My hands, I knew, would callous and I’d acclimatize to the heat. It was satisfying to work with my body, after spending most of my working life either behind a desk, or a cheese counter. By the time I got back to the house that evening, however, I was so tired I could barely walk. I had a deep, radiating heat emanating from somewhere high in my chest. That evening the fever grew worse.

The next day, I couldn’t get out of bed. A rash had colonized my legs and torso. I tossed and turned in my tangled, sweat-soaked sheets. I spent the next four days laying in my bed, drifting between sleep and waking, a scrawny grey kitten pouncing on the lumps of my toes beneath the sheets. My dreams were harsh, full of vivid colours and noise and horrible fears.

My desire to leave Mexico began as a quiet, nudging suggestion and grew in persistence with every fever-wracked day.

My desire to leave Mexico began as a quiet, nudging suggestion and grew in persistence with every fever-wracked day. I couldn’t do it, of course. I’d planned to stay here for four months and it had been less than two. I’d also sublet my place back home and it wouldn’t be vacant for another six weeks. More importantly, leaving would be quitting. I had already quit my job back home, and quit the life I knew in favour of this one. If I quit now I’d be going back to what I’d left without the thing I’d come for, giving up on finding meaning and direction through travel and physical labour and baby turtle-rescuing.

I had met people who’d been backpacking for months, even years at a time, living happily on the road, making friends as they went, relishing the eye-opening, growth-inducing experiences that come with discovering new parts of the world. When I left home I had wanted to become one of these people, to get my share of the fulfilment they seemed to receive from a life unencumbered by possessions or office jobs or whatever was happening on Twitter. If I left now I’d be acknowledging that I wasn’t.

It was, I know now, a precipice I’d been approaching for some time. Things had begun well. The hostel dorms and roadside tacos and ubiquitous crowing roosters had been exciting for a while. It was all so thrillingly foreign. Something as simple as walking down the street was an onslaught of new experiences, unfamiliar sounds and smells.

But like marrying someone you met at a craps table in Vegas, after living together for a little while, Travel and I turned out to be less compatible than I had initially believed. The quirks that were so charming at first began to grate on me. Did they have to play that mariachi music so loud? Why can’t I get a salad anywhere? If all of these roosters could possibly not crow the entire night that would be great. My fever eventually subsided and my strength began to return, but my desire for adventure—and the uncomfortable situations it frequently entailed—didn’t come with it.