1.
Decide to study abroad in Scotland for four months. When your family takes to the airport, you’re shaking. Almost turn back. Almost give up. Instead, take a plane from JFK to London Heathrow. Fear travelling alone, be unable to fall asleep. When your plane lands at Heathrow, move through customs without falling apart. Sit in a chair and breathe when you realize they won’t tell you your gate until the plane arrives.
Be unable to breathe deeply. Count your breaths. One. Two. One. In. Out. In.
Try to call mom but remember you don’t have a SIM card yet. Open your computer. Ignore the people buzzing around you. Busy little bees freak you out.
Be relieved you get 20 minutes of free wi-fi. 7am here is 2am at home. Check Facebook. The only person awake is your friend studying in Australia. Message her. Ask her to calm you down. When she tells you to breathe, say you already tried. She’ll tell you to count sheep.
When the wi-fi stops working, hyperventilate. This moment will become nightmare material. Get up to call your mom on a pay phone that will cost a big buck because you haven’t exchanged dollars to pounds yet.
Feel your menstrual cycle start. Rush back to your suitcase and head to the bathroom. Unwrap a pad with shaky hands.
Tear up in the stall but do not cry.
2.
You are the wallflower of your dorm.
Make one friend a week into your time in Scotland, because she saw you sitting alone. Meet her friends and finally have a group to hang out with. When they invite you out, do what you know how to do best: drink a glass of wine. It will empty your mind of constant thoughts of you’re nothing special. Pull on stockings and pumps. Grab your purse. Walk to your friend’s apartment. See the guy you like and blush. Be angry at yourself for wanting him.
Take a shot of whiskey. Take another shot. Play Kings Cup. Be last in the line for waterfall. Feel your fingers tingling. Wait for the bus. Sit with the group, make jokes, and play Jell-O whenever the bus turns. Go to Molly Malone’s. Show your ID at the door.
When someone hands you a jaeger bomb, down it. You’ll almost puke. Drink a glass of water. Show your ID at the door to Club Fubar. Buy a jack and coke. Dance. Pretend you are sexy. Finish your drink. Buy another.
Go to the bathroom with your girlfriends and take selfies. Dance with the guy who makes you blush. Pretend you are sexy. Get hit on by an old Scottish man talking about Patrick Star. Finish your drink. Ditch the old man in the crowd.
Make sure you stay drunk or the stream of you’re nothing will start again.
Pretend you are sexy. Dance. Stay at the club until 2am. Get a taxi home.
Back in the apartment, warm up frozen pizza with your friends. Curse your friend when she gets you water. Eat pizza. Talk until 4am. Go to bed; wake up hungover. Avoid everyone. Stay in bed because the anxiety is back, full force.
Wish you were still drunk.
3.
A month later, decide to climb Dumyat because you’re the only one who hasn’t yet.
Look out your window at the mini mountain while you get your sneakers on. Worry about being out of shape. Start the climb with three friends.
Remember, breathe.
Wonder what it is to be thin, athletic, and full of breath. One foot after the other. When you start lagging, you’ll feel humiliated. Tell your friends to leave you behind. Be just a little thankful when they don’t. Try to stop assuming people judge you for your inabilities.
See sheep along the ridges, dotted white against grey rain clouds. Avoid mud piles and brambles. Be careful when you climb over rocks. Make it to the top, lean over, and feel sick.
Breathe.
Eat carrots that a friend brought. Add a rock to a cairn as a symbol of you made it to the top. Wish you had brought a heavier coat. Dislike how intense the wind is this high in the sky. Look across the valley. Snap a picture of the river looking like a fat silver slug.
On your way down the mini mountain, move faster than your friends. Take the lead.
Feel less inadequate this time around.
4.
For fall break, travel to London with your friend and her Cambodian boyfriend.
On the first night, try to decide where to go for dinner. Want to explore, but not too far. Argue with your friend and her boyfriend over where to eat. Head back toward the hostel on the tube. Love how fast it goes.
Pass a Cambodian restaurant. Agree when her boyfriend suggests eating there. Wait to be seated. Ask for silverware instead of chopsticks. Listen to her boyfriend order tea in Cambodian. Order roast duck. Order hot and sour soup.
Look around while you wait for food. See the window where an employee chops up a chicken and hangs it upside down. Cringe. Warm your fingers with your tea. Sprinkle sugar into the mug.
Fall in love with the soup. Try duck for the first time. Wonder why it’s so greasy.
A few days later, your friend and her boyfriend leave London before you.
You have a day to kill. Now that you’ve practised exploring, take your map and hop on a double bus. Imagine being Hermione Granger on her way to Hogwarts. Eat lunch at the Cheshire Cheese Pub where Charles Dickens wrote. Write a poem about St. Paul Cathedral and its echo chamber.
Go to Portobello Market. Buy a Christmas present for your stepmom. Get lost in Portobello Market. Don’t freak out. Keep your breaths short and succinct.
Follow your map to the Cambodian restaurant. Wait to be seated. Ask for silverware. Order tea. Order hot and sour soup. Order roast duck.
Don’t look at the window where the employee chops the meat. Feel lonely. Remember how big London is. Ignore the anxiety.
Remind yourself that you saw the city, alone, and didn’t have a panic attack.
Warm your fingers with your tea. Fall in love with the soup all over again.
Enjoy being by yourself for the first time.
5.
Be invited on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Dublin with four of your friends.
Take a rickety, cheap plane to Ireland. Have a mini-shopping trip when no one can find the hostel. Without wi-fi, wander on O’Connell Street until you find the Spire of Dublin. From there, take a right and walk four blocks until someone spots the hostel. Love the low ceilings and rustic floors and neon-coloured walls.
On Saturday, go to see Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Pass St. Patrick’s Cathedral and take pictures. That night, visit Temple Bar. Buy an expensive jack and coke. Down it. Don’t buy another.
Hush you’re nothing special with live music.
Run into another friend and bar-hop with everyone for a while, without drinking.
On Sunday, when half your group goes to the Guinness Distillery, enjoy lunch out with one friend at a hole-in-the-wall café. Order fish and chips and an orange hot chocolate. Decide the best fish and chips was in London. Decide this is the best hot chocolate you’ve ever had.
After ordering, blush at the cute waiter with his heavy Irish accent. Wink at him. Ignore your friend when she giggles.
Part ways.
Explore George’s Street Arcade. Alone. Keep your map close but try to explore without needing it. Find off-the-beaten-path treasures like paper shops and alleyways ending with parks full of pine trees and thistles. Rendezvous with your girlfriends at a corner store.
Buy coke and whiskey and smuggle it into the hostel. Get drunk and play games until 4 am when you have to catch your flight back to Scotland. Get through airport security a bit tipsy. Lay down with your friends while waiting for your flight and go from tipsy to hungover.
Laugh out loud. Hear the other girls join in.
Laugh harder.
6.
Get up early on Sunday morning, two days into your tour of Northern Scotland.
Meet the fisherman behind the hostel. Get nervous about the tiny boat for the eight-person group. Climb in the boat and steady yourself. Marvel at Loch Carron, misty and sunlit. Try not to fall when the engine starts and lurches the boat out into the water.
Breathe in loch fog, tasting like seaweed and almost rain. Bury your hands in your coat.
In the middle of the loch, help the fisherman drop the net. Drag the net across the loch bottom. Five minutes later, help heave the net over the side of the boat. Fling everything onto the floor. Stare at the brightly coloured starfish, the scallops, the seaweed, the snails, the pebbles, and sand.
Hold a spiked, crimson starfish. Squeal when it extends and retracts its arms.
When the fisherman brings out a bin of crabs, surprise yourself with the eagerness to hold one. Keep your fingers away from the claws. Pose for a picture with hostel friends.
Legs become used to the back and forth of the water. Let your body move on its own, keeping you balanced. Three months ago, you never would have stepped onto a boat like this. Three months ago, you would have said no to all of it. Three months ago, you were ready to give up.
Eat a raw scallop, watery and reminiscent of swordfish. Savour the flavour.
Eat a pan-seared scallop, tasting like muted swordfish smothered with butter and warming the sides of your mouth. Savour the flavour.
When it starts to rain, don’t care.
Help toss the starfish and snails back into the loch water. Make your way back to shore, breathing in and out. Normally.
No panic.
Calm.
You could get used to this.
