I felt scared, so I knew I was doing something right.
I rolled my bright pink carry-on bag down the streets of Paris, and stepped further into an ethereal idea that had become reality.
As a concept, staying in a foreign country alone for five days sounded like a pleasant, borderline romantic experience.
“Oh!” some people would gasp when they heard about my plans to travel alongside solitude. “Are you sure you’re up for that?”
“I think so,” I’d say, talking and grinning out of my butt. “I’ve never traveled alone before so I’ll either love it and wanna do it again, or have a mental breakdown and that’ll be that.” Then I’d laugh, and they wouldn’t.
“Do you speak French?” Was the usual follow up question.
“Un fucking peu from Madame Bittout’s class in middle school,” I’d say to my friends.
In more professional settings, I’d carry on with a casual and noncommittal, “Kinda.”
This wasn’t the first time I’d impulsively planned to do something way out of my comfort zone. (When I first heard the lyric, “you’re having delusions of grandeur” in the song Defying Gravity, I had an awkward moment of self recognition. Wait, I think I have that, half of the time. The other half of my time is spent on the comedown after acting upon said grand delusions.)
Around the same time I booked my flight to Paris, I also filled out a Google Form to RSVP “yes” to a four day “Garden Party” in the middle of the desert in Moab, Utah.
Let me repeat: a party in the desert with a Google Form invite. It sounds like a paradox; the ol’ yin and yang, chaos and order. It all seemed aligned with the vibe of my friend Suzy who’d given me the insider’s invite.
Suzy is an ever-flowing river of life and reflection; a spaz and a sphinx wrapped in one. We met at a hippie-dippie movement and acrobatics gym in Boulder, where we bonded over things like microdosing on acid before handstand class.
“It’s like a self expression festival,” Suzy told me in December of the year before. “There will be music, dancing, and an open mic! You can do your comedy set.”
As someone who’d spent the first twenty years of her life suppressing every last genuine feeling, and the most recent four years learning how to unearth that buried bedrock of original thought, I immediately said yes.
I RSVP’ed in January, and the event was in April. In late March, I received an email in my inbox from a guy named Kai.
Garden Party Itinerary! The subject line read.
I opened the email and read through the weekend’s main activities. Volleyball, tea table, dancing, yoga, consummation tent.
Consummation tent?
I double checked the definition of the word “consummation” and audibly gulped when its meaning was confirmed.
“So you’re going to a culty desert orgy?” My friend Jack asked.
“What? God, no!” I said, truly afraid. “There’s just gonna be music, dancing, a bonfire at night, a comedy open mic…”
“And a free for all sex tent,” Jack finished for me.
“I already filled out the Google Form!” I said. “I’m going, it could give me great material.”
The consummation tent situation freaked me out. Yet still, a few days later I sat on the curb with packed camping bags as a girl named Briar pulled up in her van.
I’d also met Briar once at the hippie gym. She was my ride for the seven hour trip to Moab from Boulder, as Suzy had gone to help set up the campsite the day before.
“I don’t think I’m going to participate in all of the weekend’s activities…” I said as we packed my bag of apples, peanut butter, and marshmallows in the back.
“Oh my god, don’t worry, me neither,” Briar said. “My brother’s going to this thing.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
The Garden Party turned out to bestow upon me a long weekend of human connection, zero consummation tent visits, and so much ketamine I forgot the consummation tent was there.
The risk paid off.
And now few months later, here I was again in unfamiliar territory with the potential to have one of the greatest adventures of my life.
It wasn’t the possibility of choking on a baguette as an old french woman watched with disdain (which did happen), that scared me. Rather, it was confronting the reality of being alone with my own thoughts for five days.
Sure, I could Facetime friends and family, but if my brain decided to draw the blinds and batten down the hatches, there was no one within the time zone to coax me out of it.
My black dog, as Winston Churchill put it, rears its heavy head in the most unexpected place; comfort.
“You’re just like my sister, you always have to be doing something,” my mom says to me. “You can’t just sit still at home.”
If I stop treading water, I don’t float, I sink. Stillness drags me to the bottom of the ocean of my mind, where the ancient species of fish struggle against the current of what is and what will be.
I find routine leads to attachment, which is my most soul-sucking form of comfort. I start to depend on outside forms of escape in the shape of a person or consistency of a drug, and ultimately lose myself in the process.
When I read David Goggin’s book “Can’t Hurt Me” my main takeaway was to do something uncomfortable everyday. So, I tried doing butt stuff with a guy who was very happy I read David Goggin’s book.
Sadly, it turns out anal sex is not my thang. So, I found other ways to get uncomfortable and expand my mind, rather than my sphincter.
My first morning in Paris started at 5am. I pulled my sneakers on and stumbled out the door of the eight person hostel dorm as quietly as possible.
I took the metro to the Pont Neuf station, and got off near the Seine. As the sun swallowed the horizon and shone through the latches of the Eiffel Tower to the East, I ran.
It wasn’t a particularly good run. In fact, it felt horrible as I was still half asleep and empty bellied. Dark weeds of fright sprouted in my mind; imaloneinparis imaloneinparis imaloneinparis.
Yet after twenty minutes, my steps and thoughts reoriented themselves from a path of panic to one of possibility.
I spent five days traipsing around, and following my mind like a nose as it sniffed out fresh adventure. I sat in corners of cafes and inhaled the cigarette smoke of the locals. I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying, but I felt it, especially when they laughed with their friends.
I stared at the Eiffel Tower with my mouth agape for thirty seconds, and thought of that Kendrick lyric about his lower central extremity being as big as. I took a selfie in front of the Arc Du Triomphe, and got photobombed by a stranger who was way too happy about making it in my picture. I read a book smushed between morning and evening commuters on the metro.
The days stacked themselves into tidy little piles of curiosity. I could go where I pleased, when I wanted to. I had nowhere to be, and no one to see.
For the first time in my life the constant faucet of noise dribbled to drops.
And instead of maddening, I found it calming.
On the sixth day, I headed to the airport to leave Paris. I was excited to have human interaction that dipped below surface level in fragmented French, but also a bit sad to leave a time well spent.
The weeks after I returned to the US brought a flood of life transition. I got a new job, moved out of my parent’s home, and opened a new chapter of life.
This flood brought with it the debris of fear and uncertainty as the noise became louder than ever. At first, I struggled against fully stepping into this new phase of life, afraid I’d drown.
Then one day, a thought shouted above the panicked murmur.
Pretend you’re in Paris.
I started to enter each day, still fearful, but curious for what the day may bring. And that’s when things started falling into place.
That’s why I keep telling myself this: if something makes you scared, something’s gonna be good (unless it’s a grope.)
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