Why Does Anyone Go On Trips?

As soon as my plane took off from O’Hare, a panic attack tied off my throat and I sat wide-eyed, gasping by the window. I didn’t have Bandit. I couldn’t get to medication without asking the people next to me to get up. Even after we leveled out, the thought of using actual words seemed insurmountable. I waited until we landed in Seattle, and sat impatiently knees bouncing while the people ahead of us fumbled with their bags and the seatbelts they forgot to unlatch, and the children they had to direct to walk forward.  I lurched out into the aisle, and bolted off the plane, eyes on the floor in front of me, until I could balance my backpack on my knee and shakily tear off the white cap from the orange bottle. I took half a pill, denying eye contact with the people I was certain were staring. I put the bottle away, and walked toward my next gate. 

Soon I was sitting in a rocking chair in the SEA-TAC atrium while a man played guitar and, head tipped back, I watched the sky. I rocked back and forth sipping my coffee. I set the cup down, and I watched my hands shaking, trying to measure if I had gotten steadier. 

Why was I going on this trip?

To turn back in Seattle would be inconvenient, but very manageable. If I got on the next plane, it would be a commitment to the next two weeks. My psyche was obviously protesting. My body was sending the loudest warning signal it could. 

Why does anyone go on trips? I didn’t know.

I was still weak from the parasites I had picked up in Peru. They were gone, I thought, but they’d left their damage. I hadn’t slept through the night since the news I’d gotten in Cancun. But I had weighed every option. And I had made this choice, so far, knowing exactly what it was. The buddy system, at best. 

I can’t say what made me walk towards my next flight, except that I was willing to at least see how it went. 

It was time to live again. 

Rose garden or not. 

I stood up from my rocking chair. Less shaking, more breathing, walking deliberately toward my gate. When I arrived, we were already boarding. I dumped my coffee in a trash can, got out my passport and boarding pass, and walked on board. I tried not to think about the other eye contact I’d soon want to avoid.

I saw how few empty seats were left. I had cut it close. But there was still space for my backpack in the overhead bin. I had packed light. At least. And I sat down. 

And I began again. 

When I arrived in Cambodia, alone for the night, I felt victorious and proud of simply having arrived. The tuk tuk picked me up at the airport and the moist air painted my arms and face glistening as we sped along into the city. I watched the lights of the large hotels and the street vendors, and clung to my backpack, fearful it would bounce right away from me. I smiled into the heat of the middle of the night, my ten AM, as we jolted along paved roads and then rutted dirt alleys that stank of stagnant water. Once in my room, I turned on the air conditioning, and showered and rinsed out my travel clothes. I felt emboldened to walk the streets, but instead, told myself to lie down. It was late, and I would have to face the consequences of coming in the morning. Better to have rested. 

Once he arrived, I weathered the next two panic attacks stoically. I kept medication nearby. “You are quiet,” he said, visibly frustrated. “Yes. I am quiet,” I replied, slowly and deliberately. I watched him through the shakiness, and wondered what it would be like to walk through the world the way he did. 

But I was glad I didn’t know. 

The days were filled. With temples. And noodle soup. And the blanket of heat. And eventually, rain. I constantly sipped the tea I’d brought to heal my stomach from the parasites. He stared at the yellow-brown water in my plastic bottle, looking disgusted. I watched him out of the sides of my eyes, through the fog of reversed circadian rhythms. 

“It’s just tea,” I said. “Try it.” And he did. 

We had our moments of civility. 

By the time I left him, halfway through the trip, they had thinned. 

“We can do elephants on Friday. This place has an opening.”

“Can I think about it for five minutes? How long is it? How much is it?”

“Sure. Yes, it’s all day. We can save sixty dollars if we share an elephant.”

“Share an elephant?” My confusion had taken a week to arrive, but it hit like a door slammed on my face.

“Yeah, I’m up for sharing an elephant to save sixty bucks.” I looked at him from the other twin bed my Wisconsin friend was lying on with me. I tried to imagine what two people sharing an elephant looked like from all of the pictures we’d seen. Bouncing along side by side on a narrow bench? Arms around each other like on a motorcycle? I tried to imagine us, specifically, sharing an elephant. All day long?

I wondered, for the hundredth time, if she had known about us. Or even if she did now. 

Surely not. 

“I don’t want to share an elephant with you. Seriously.”

“Well it looks like if I go alone I can’t share an elephant either, but if we both ride one together, then it’s cheaper.”

I was finally incredulous. “We are not riding an elephant together. All day long. Whatever it costs.”

Surely not!

“So you maybe want to go, but not to share an elephant?” he tried to smile, making it into a joke, make it less awkward for my friend, make it not about what it was about. 

“Let’s not talk about this,” I said, over the top of her head. I lay back down in my bed “I need Bandit.” And he looked over at me, out of the sides of his eyes, and didn’t answer before returning to clack away at his keyboard. 

It was the closest we ever came to talking about it since Cancun. 

What was the point? 

A few hours later, my other friend asked me why I was staying. And I didn’t have an answer. She said she didn’t have a reason to stay either. Let’s go. Really? Yes. But isn’t that melodramatic? And this isn’t?

Soon, I walked grinning through the dark streets of Chiang Mai, as we stumbled along with all of our belongings spilling out of our bags, unable to find a hostel with space. “I’m so sorry,” she kept saying, attempting to navigate us to yet another hostel in her fluent Lao while full taxis and busses putted along past our upraised arms in the night. Buddhist Lent had packed the city. 

“No. I’m so happy,” I replied. But it was more than happy. Because I could feel that I didn’t need my tea anymore either.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” she asked. “I feel bad our escape plan didn’t go more smoothly.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not worried about a thing.” I said, holding all of my worldly possessions on a street corner in Thailand. “I know we will somehow be just fine now.”

And I laughed at myself for all the moments before, when I hadn’t been able to say the same thing. Because now they felt like the ridiculous stories you tell your friends over drinks, and not like I was watching someone eat a plate of my very own ribs, nonchalantly commenting on the caliber of the barbecue sauce. We giggled when we had to change rooms because a sewage smell came through the shower drain. We laughed in the street after meeting a very attractive Thai iced coffee vendor with an impressive arm tattoo. We talked about where we wanted to be in a year or five, and how much we missed Wisconsin. We hugged goodbye in our hotel parking lot with promises of reunions with Bandit.

Finally, I breathed into all of myself, because no parasites took up space there anymore.

And this time, beginning again felt easy.

Namaste.