Band-Aids

I want to travel the world

and breathe the air of new places.

 

 

 



When I was in college I had several anxious, worry filled moments. I worried that my grades were not as good as they should be. I worried that I wouldn't be able to stretch the money that my parents had given me to last throughout the month. I worried that I was disappointing my parents. I worried that I wasn't studying hard enough. All of these worries and the worries surrounding my upcoming marriage came to a head one spring morning and I found myself having a minor panic attack.

I knew that there were certain things that I would always worry about, but the crushing fear and inability to function that day almost took me out. I wandered around campus like a ghost attending my classes, but being completely disconnected from the present moment. I couldn't focus on anything but the pounding in my chest and the anxious feeling that I just couldn't get to the root of.

After class I walked into our lobby of my dorm and talked with one of my friends. I described my anxiety asking if he had ever just been super anxious but couldn't figure out why, to which he replied, "Yeah, it's kind of like you need to travel." I was sold! I knew if I could just get away from everything that was causing me stress I could relax. I knew that I didn't have a lot of money, but if I got a couple of my roommates together we could all pitch in on gas and could take a little weekend away. Since we were only a couple of miles from Lava Hot Springs we decided this was the perfect retreat.

So we packed up our towels and swim suits and piled into my little Toyota Corolla. About an hour into our drive we came to a familiar fork in the road. The previous year a couple of friends and I had vacationed in Seattle for spring break. We had fallen in love with the Ansel Adam's print of Multnomah falls in Oregon, so we planned a trip around the falls that turned into a brilliant get away. The fork that I was approaching on this trip would either take us to Lava Hot Springs if we turned right and Seattle if we turned left. After about 20 seconds of deliberation, with a hoot and a holler we turned LEFT!

The energy of the car immediately changed. Though we were excited to go to Lava Hot Springs the possibility of an adventure in Seattle held so much more mystery and promise. We gave no thought to the fact that we had no money, no change of clothes, no toiletries, we just knew that adventure was calling and we had no other choice but to answer.

By this time the sun was beginning to set and I worried for a moment that we might have bitten off more than I could chew. My Corolla was a stick shift and I was the only one in the car that could drive a stick. We left the dorm around 6:00 and knowing that we had 12-13 hours of driving ahead of us, I worried that I wouldn't be able to stay awake for the whole journey. But I also knew there was no turning around. Keep in mind that this was in a time before cell phones. (Some people had them, but they weren't intended for starving college students) So if we did find ourselves in a ditch, we would have to sit and wait until some stranger just happened upon us.

At our first stop I loaded up on Mt. Dew and chocolate. We were still giddy about our decision and were clucking out ideas about what we could do when we arrived in Seattle. By 1:00 am almost everyone had settled down and we were quietly listening to the radio. By 2:00 everyone in the car was asleep, including me, for the most part. I look back on that trip and wonder how we ever made it. We were driving through canyons with steep cliffs at a rate of speed that was barely safe for someone who was completely conscious and there were distinct sections of the drive that I just don't remember. It was not my brightest moment.

By 3:00 I knew that I was REALLY no longer safe to drive. We stopped for gas and I told my friends that we would either need to sleep there for a couple hours or someone else would need to man the helm. My roommate Mindy got a crash course in driving a manual transmission and we were on our way. I settled in to the back seat and slept for two hours straight without even the slightest inkling that I wasn't comfortably in my bed.

When we stopped for breakfast I was refreshed and ready to take over again. We continued our journey without further incident, unless you count getting pulled over and issued a warning for speeding by a lovely highway patrolman from Oregon.

I think we spent a total of 8 hours in Seattle but we sucked every last drop of fun out of the trip as we possibly could. We rode the ferry over to Bainbridge island and sipped on Italian sodas, we ate lunch at the diner featured in "Sleepless in Seattle" (pictured above), we strolled through Pikes Market and bought pastries and big beautiful grapes, we saw the space needle and just released ourselves to the notion of serendipity.

I bring this trip up, not to show you how fun and spontaneous I am (which you will hopefully discover on your own as we become better friends), but to come to the realization that travel for me is a band-aid. Since this trip I have found myself with an unrelenting drive to travel especially when I am feeling stressed or anxious. I work where I work to satisfy my wanderlust.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to speak with a therapist who taught me that anxiety and depression are best of friends. She said that many people with depression also have issues with anxiety. We talked through ways to cope with anxiety besides slapping on a band-aid, and I think that I have been able to take a step back when those familiar feelings begin cropping up and really analyze what is going on. That doesn't mean that I don't still have an immediate, unquenchable desire to get out of Dodge, it just means that when those feelings come up I look inside to make sure there isn't something else spurring that desire.

I realize, now more than ever, that I can't always just pack up and get away. I need to face my anxiety head on, clean up the wound and work on healing it. Even though travel is a LOVELY alternative to facing my problems, my problems will still be there when the thrill of the adventure has worn off and I'm left with a post vacation hangover.