About to take off on my first international trip in 58 weeks. All of this feels surreal. I have so many reservations about going, but at the same time I know I need to. I know I don’t even know what I’m missing right now. I’m hoping as soon as my feet hit the ground and I feel the sun on my skin that the sleeping part of my soul wakes up. That I feel home again. I’m apprehensive that all of it will feel wrong. That I’ll just find myself surrounded by the worst types of travelers, disregarding the fact that there’s a pandemic surging its way across the globe. I’m one of them, at this point. And reconciling that is hard. All I know is that I’m trusting the science and that, to the best of my ability, I’ll continue to act in a way that minimizes my footprint as much as possible.
Sitting here on the runway in Dallas, I’m still not even sure what it is I’m hoping to find while I’m gone. In a way I guess that’s always the case. But it just feels so distinctly intangible this time. A yearning for something I don’t even recognize anymore.
It’s been over two years since I’ve gone on a solo trip like this. And the last one was entirely overshadowed and consumed by [17]. Fuck, the one before that was too. It would have been as long ago as Australia and New Zealand that I’d traveled alone without his presence in my mind. But even so much of that was overshadowed by [i]. Honestly, this may be the first trip I’ve ever gone on alone without my mind being overrun with thoughts of someone else. Where I have nothing to consume me but my own journey and path.
Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts of COVID.
We’ve been in the air 20 minutes now, and already I feel myself lighter, more hopeful, more grateful. Looking at the window I watched a smaller plane a few thousand feet below us, racing along, darting between the clouds, and the sheer magic of it made my chest tighten and my eyes gloss over. It’s just so incredible. What we have, what we’ve been given.