When the Going Gets Tough...

By Erica

End of April, 2007: the end of the shittiest semester of my life. In the past four months, I've practically given myself Generalized Anxiety Disorder, lost one of my best friends, jeopardized my relationship with my partner, cried myself to sleep in the evenings, been unable to sleep through the night, and dealt with the seemingly constant onslaught of questions. Where will I go after graduation in a year? What do I want to do with my life? Where will I be this summer? What will I be doing for work? How will I pay rent? How will I get anywhere? How do I expect to survive if I don't go for a Master's degree? When am I going to visit everyone I've ever promised to visit, in spite of my financial limitations? I've reached the point where every day is horrible, every night is worse, and I don't see how it can possibly end. What I need is a break, a chance to run away and start it all over again.
I grew up traveling, really. My parents ensured that I was used to flying, driving, and busing at an early age- my first "vacation" on a plane happened when I was 10 months old- and when Dad's conferences and trainings took him around the world, he took the rest of us with him. Other kids grew up dreaming about visiting far-off or exotic lands; I grew up actually going to them. My first transatlantic flight took me to Australia at age 7, where I trekked through a tropical rainforest, BBQed under the stars in the Great Australian Desert, and learned to play the didgeridoo. Each time I stepped into the airport, lugged my stuff onto a plane, or even snapped a luggage tag neatly around my bag handle was the beginning of an exciting adventure. To this day, the prospect of traveling, especially on a plane, is irresistible. The moment the plane's wheels leave the ground and we begin the steep climb up into the atmosphere, something inside me changes and loosens and is left on the ground below. In high school, bored with the rural area I lived in, I dreamed about putting a few necessities- contact lenses, toothbrush, change of underwear- into a bag, climbing in the car, and then just driving. Going somewhere, anywhere, that was far away and where I could start over.

This spring, all I want to do is fulfill that old fantasy. I want to fuck school, fuck obligations, and fuck emotional ties and just get the hell away.

Serendipity strikes one day, just as I'm packing up to head home for the unplanned, terrifyingly uncommitted summer ahead. I get a message from my old supervisor, offering me a temporary job at her organization, and it doesn't start until June. At the same time, a request comes in from a collective in Toronto. They want me to come and participate on a panel about social change and engagement, at the end of May. Suddenly, the next three weeks begin to take shape.

When I get home at the beginning of May, I start calling people all over the eastern part of the US and Canada. Hannah in Philly; Gayle in Plainfield; Liz in NYC; Jocelyn in Toronto; Lisa in Schenectady; Emma in Saratoga Springs. "Remember how I planned to visit?" I say. "How about I actually do it?" I'm still quite financially limited; all I can afford is the $50 plane ticket to Philadelphia. But that's enough to get me on the road. It's enough to get me the hell away.

I only carry two small shoulderbags, somehow managing to fit three weeks' worth of clothes and supplies therein, and two skeins of yarn that I want to use to expand my knitting knowledge. My passport, for the trip to Toronto, is tucked into a side pocket, and my near-worthless debit card is in my jeans. For the first time in my life, I'll be traveling without family and without heading to university. On one hand, that feels wrong: I feel like I'm too young for this. At the same time, however, I'm 20. I'm going to university in a foreign country. And, for the first time in my life, the one thing I need and crave more than anything is to be completely unfettered and alone.

My first stop is to visit my sister at her college. Mom gives me lots of hugs and kisses, hands me a bag of cookies to give Hannah when I land, and gives me that look that says that she's a little jealous. "Be safe," she says, "and say hi to Hannah for us!" Because at this point, we all know that Hannah's stressed. In spite of everything- finishing her first year, about to start finals, and living with the roommate from Hell- but she's got an air mattress and extra food on her meal plan, and she wants to see me, so we spend a couple of days banging around Philadelphia together. We goof off in a mosaic-tiled house called the Magic Garden, meet up with an aunt and uncle for delicious Italian food, and celebrate May Day on her campus. She introduces me to the Dean of Admissions at her school's graduate social work program. By the time I've decided to head to upstate New York, I've also decided that having any sort of buffer in my savings account is useless. Since airfare's out of the question, in spite of that leaving-the-ground good feeling, I start checking out Amtrak.

The next three weeks are absolutely liberating. I've got an idea of when I'm traveling to where- a few days in Schenectady, a few more in Toronto, then five in Plainfield, and so on- but the means are never certain until a few days before. Everyone's patient with me and my uncertain arrival times, and the fact that I look a little like a hobo. With no razors allowed on the airplane and no checked bag, I have no razors. My hair- chopped to baby-dyke length in the fall- is scraggly and threatening to mullet, I have no makeup, and the only shoes I brought are a phenomenally smelly pair of Birkenstocks. Every night I write in my journal, as I've been doing since I was sixteen, and every day my knitting grows more and more on the circular needles I bought in Philly. I have no homework, no employment demands, and no one's asking me anything about my future. In Schenectady I play with a four-year-old who's practicing her letters and teach her to make dandelion chains, and in the evenings, Lisa and I tell stories and decompress each other. Emma, in Saratoga Springs, is finishing her finals, so we spend sixteen hours a day at the computer lab. She makes graphics on the screens, I play B'loons until my eyes sting, and we break only to go to Coldstone for ice cream. In Toronto, it's 80F- somehow the spring is slipping by- and Jocelyn takes me around the University of Toronto's campus until I can hardly walk. Liz and I spend our time in New York City watching Scrubs; when she has a job interview, I walk around and around Central Park, watching the joggers and letting my mind drift. Finally, I go to Plainfield, and Gayle and I spend five days in the house my mother grew up in- a house I haven't been to in the seven years since my grandfather died. Gayle has to help pay for my bus ticket home when it's all over, because three weeks of Amtrak and Greyhound takes its toll on the student bank account, and before I leave she lets me use her washing machine and drier. And when I get home to New Hampshire, about to start work for the summer and register for the GREs and start grad school applications and research my thesis topic and all the billions of things I'd been weighed down by just a few weeks before, I feel better.

Obviously, the vacation isn't a magic pill. The things that were wrong before I left are still wrong. My friend and I never really speak again, I'm still under a lot of pressure to figure out my future, and my partner and I still have problems to work out. Going away for a few weeks doesn't really change anything you go back to, if all the things you left are depending on you to make them happen. But being gone for that time, being untethered and on my own, has been a literal lifesaver. For the first time since January, I'm sleeping consistently and without the soporific effect of tears. I can think about the future without panicking, and I'm even feeling comfortable with the idea of making decisions about graduate school and career options. Instead of waking up and hoping to cope with the day, I'm waking up and somewhat excited about what the day may bring. The trip's given me a chance to regroup, collect my thoughts, and restart.

For the first time in four months, I'm ready.