September 2017

In the first few minutes of my solo-backpacker adventure, I wandered around JFK with a oh-shit-what-I-done feeling.

 

I shrunk in my shoes. The airport inflated with each breath. My backpack became unbearably heavy.
As I waited in line to get my boarding pass a man in front of me passively mumbled “Allez-y”
I ignored it, staring down at the carpet and then up to the impossibly high ceiling.
“Allez-y!” he said again, with his hands pointed towards the empty space in front of him. I jumped a bit, then quickly pushed past before he could change his mind.
After seven hours of stiff legs and and good conversation with my very first travel buddy: Mike, I finally saw France as a wide stretch of green. It was too big to imagine what was in it.
Two minutes later the country vanished under the same cloud bank that I had been staring at ever since I decided to go– too thick to see under.
Once in the airport, Mike and I teamed up against customs and the menacing Public Transport. We took down kiosks information desks and maps. If sitting next to one of the only other Americans on the flight (who also happens to share my passion for Andy Shauf- The Party) was not enough of a coincidence, Mike also took both the same train and the same metro line as me until we went our separate ways.
Before my trip I had only a few expectations: homesickness, discomfort, anxiety, embarrassment. All of which happened, all at once, in the very minute I left my mom at the terminal.
Now the bad comes in intervals: a daily dose of embarrassment, a weekly visit of anxiety, a case of homesickness, a bit of discomfort here and there.
It’s all incomparable to the satisfaction and joy I feel everyday. It’s a very specific type: It’s when you know what you want and you keep it lodge in your heart and you step out into a world of strong winds, holding on to yourself as you hurtle in the right direction.