Introduction: Los Angeles to New Zealand
The following is an excerpt from a story I used to publish online. I have since removed the posts because they felt wildly personal. And as the years passed, I felt embarrassed of past feelings. I can look back at these posts now with kindness. I can see how the younger version of me was desperate to write and make something of her life. I would write most of the story differently, but this one feels truest written like this.
You can bring everything with you to the Southern Hemisphere.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Don't let the airlines tell you it's not possible or that there would be an extra charge. Because it is possible and it's free. I did. I brought it all with me to the Southern Hemisphere, across the Pacific Ocean, 6,000+ miles, on a 13 hr flight, through customs, through baggage claim, and there it was: all the things you try to flee when you travel across the world and all the things you thought you needed to leave behind.
There it was: all wrapped up in me, looking back at me in the mirror of an airport bathroom on the other side of the planet. A thing of chaos and contradiction. A thing hungry for change.
The following travel series is about the 11 weeks and 4 day journey, across the other side of the planet, during my time in New Zealand and Thailand. It's about the time I finally did the things I wanted to do, fell apart, fell in love and learned what it really means to change. Or, in truth, what it really means to fight for yourself.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I anxiously texted her moments before takeoff, "Are you sure I can take it? It won't mess me up?"
"It's HALF a Xanax, Amor. You'll be fine. It will help," she said.
I have the kind of anxiety that makes it difficult for me to take medicine. I know, that sounds nuts and stupid and pathetic. Let this be a judgment free zone, because there are going to be a lot more silly things my brain says to me that I'll have to share on here and the medicine fear truly is the tip of the iceberg. I mean, I have a hard enough time taking an ibuprofen without imagining it burning a hole through my colon, causing me to internally bleed without anyone knowing. Sometimes I imagine that I'll be walking down the street, having just taken an ibuprofen due to a headache and then BAM, I collapse, dead to the ground while pigeons pick at my exposed feet and fingernails as my family regretfully looks at what I used to be and says, "We should have listened to her when she asked if it would kill her."
No scientific evidence can truly pacify my anxiety. That's the real fucked up part, that all rationality and ACTUAL EVIDENCE can do nothing to calm my fears. Instead, there's a whole lot of doubt and fear pulsing through my body all of the time. What if they're wrong? What if I'm allergic? What if something happens and it will be too late?
But the process of not taking medication and needing medication becomes stifling when it's the only thing that will get you through. Just like this trip. I was scared of it, mortified rather. Shitting myself with the fear. I was scared of leaving, even though leaving was all I ever wanted to do. I needed to leave this place: LA, Davis, the U.S. Adventure was calling me and this time I was buckling down and taking off. It wasn't just the wanderlust bug that had bit me. I was bit by another sort of animal: desperation, fear, sadness. I needed to leave the person I had become behind because she wasn't going to get me to be the person I wanted to be. She was just going to keep on drinking and keep holding onto relationships that were too fucked up to hold onto.
Alright, enough speaking in the third person. But yeah, I had to leave. It was necessary. In lots of ways, it was a life or death decision. Holding onto that other girl would have killed any chance of the new girl, the one who is empowered and takes ibuprofen with reckless abandon. She doesn't sweat the small stuff, she's a badass, a boss ass bitch, she has confidoncé (Beyoncé level confidence). Yup, I coined that shit. And that's the kind of shit she (this new Amor version) does on the regular.
So I popped the Xanax, got on the flight and flew. I fled.
I sat there with all the anxiety fears that can bustle around in a person in the span of 13 hours. Turns out, it's a lot. At one point I spilled my entire cup of Sprite down the side of the plane. I spent the next 6.5 hours imagining the Sprite trickle through the air ventilation system, shutting down the centralized air conditioning and slowly roasting the passengers mid air. Luckily, I had taken the Xanax, so as the thoughts simmered and stewed, I had just resolved with the idea that I just destroyed an aircraft carrier due to my negligence. If that's the way I was meant to go, then so be it, said my anxious brain on Xanax. I felt terrible, of course, but I was drugged up on some "bring me peace" pills and it brought me some measure of sanity when I would have otherwise rushed to the cockpit and angrily told them that they shouldn't have an air ventilation opening next to the window seat where passengers could easily spill their drink and destroy the plane. It was that kind of poor planning that made me anxious, living in a world with way too many mechanical holes for me to feel safe.
See? That's my brain. And it feels like an awful place to be most times, even when I am laughing and appear ok, there's likely a paranoia manifesting itself. If you ever meet me or know me or talk to me, just sit there, watch me and ask me what crazy thing my brain is telling me this time. I can almost guarantee that it will make you laugh. Not me though. I'll be reeling. And that's why I had to leave. That's why I applied to study abroad. Of course I also wanted to travel, that was always in me. But my brain was starting to say really mean and scary things to myself again. My anxiety feeds on boredom, jealousy and sadness. And the semester I was set to graduate Davis, all three began feasting on me for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
So in April, I applied for the study abroad internship program in New Zealand. I would spend 8 weeks working for a company in Auckland in the North Island. After months of dealing with financial aid, passport issues and postponing the arrival of my diploma, I got the go-ahead to participate in the program. I learned that I'd be writing for a tech website four times a week and would share a room with a girl I met during orientation. I was excited and nervous and terrified. Shitting with the fear. When my mom took me to the airport, I bawled. I stood behind a restless man in the security line, disgruntled perhaps because being in LAX is akin to being in hell, and as I waited, I watched my mom similarly tear up. 8 weeks wasn't a long time and we were used to distance separating us while I went to school in Davis. But something in me told me I'd be gone longer, something in me told me that things would be different, that I'd be different. Something in me told me to pack 3 pairs of sandals even though it was winter on the other side of the planet, 13 hours away from home.