traveling, anxiety, old friends
At the end of February, I took my second-ever trip across the Atlantic to visit a friend in London. The above picture is from a walk in her neighborhood. Is the grass especially green in England? It seemed especially green to me.
The first time I went to Europe, I accompanied my partner on a work trip to Frankfurt. On the days when he wasn’t working, we stayed at a modest hotel and spent our downtime trying to figure out what to do next (and withdrawing more and more euros, since we hadn’t expected how many places wouldn’t take credit cards). On my trip to London, I traveled alone, but my friend was waiting for me when I got off the plane. She took me to a cafe and said they had good muffins. From the first moments, I could tell that this visit would be different from my time in Frankfurt. I would get to see London through the lens of my friend’s life.
Being with her made it easier to enjoy what I like best about travel: observing people going about their business. I like to walk and take trains. I like watching the commuters, standing in the rain, sighing about their delayed buses. My friend filled the sights with anecdotes and preferences. At night we went back to her flat, and she made us dinner (insisting—in her characteristic way—that I write my postcards instead of help her with the food).
Traveling changes your senses of temporality and familiarity. It removes you from your context. On both of my trips abroad, I expected to feel a bit anxious when I arrived in the unfamiliar place. Instead, I noticed that the lack of familiarity tended to dispel anxiety rather than kick it up.
I’ll try to explain what I mean. At home, I notice myself getting nervous in everyday places. For example: if it’s raining, I will try to avoid getting into a car, because driving in bad weather makes me anxious. When we arrived in Frankfurt, it was raining, and we had to take a cab to the hotel. I simply could not be anxious about the rain at that moment. I just went where I needed to go.
Another example: sometimes I feel nervous on the subway in New York, even though I’ve lived in the city for six years and used to commute by subway. (This particular discomfort is exacerbated by the pandemic; after so much time without movement, I have to intentionally reintroduce myself to things that were once easy.) But when my friend and I took the Tube from the airport, I realized that I was not nervous about the London Underground at all. I did not know where I was or where I was going, so I did not have enough information to spin scary fantasies.
My unfamiliarity gave me permission to stop worrying. Releasing the anxiety was a huge relief.
Maybe the temporal shift contributes to the release of mundane fears? There are too many other things to think about when you’re traveling. Even brief trips create a new pocket of time, running parallel to the flow of daily life. In this pocket, my perception of time is greatly altered. Things go faster, but also much slower. The impact of a few days spent traveling outlasts the trip’s duration many times over.
Old friends also do something funny to temporality and familiarity. They make it feel like time is in the room with you.
I have known this friend since we were teenagers. When she visits me in New York, that shared-past context rises to the surface of my perception. It’s not the same as a memory—I don’t feel the past in a nostalgic or regressive way. Instead I get a rediscovered sense of awe about my present life (How can we be here? Us, together? Aren't we somewhere else, far away, a long time ago?). Plus a deep feeling of comfort and camaraderie (We know each other. There are things that don’t need saying). In London, the effect was doubled by the distance, by being in her world.
We walked along a canal on the way to Camden, where rows of houseboats were docked, and I saw graffiti about Brexit on the overpass. (How can we be here?) I met her Dutch husband. I told him that London was interesting because of the constant, jarring juxtaposition between extremely old architecture and extremely new architecture. He said this was sort of unique to London, and told me about the other cities he had been to and lived in. (When did these other people arrive? Aren't we somewhere else, a long time ago?)
At dinner later, I was telling a story, and my friend took an important detail right out of my mouth.
“How did you guess?” I said.
“I know you!” she said. And I laughed. (There are things that don’t need saying.)
Maybe I’m over-intellectualizing. As I write down the memory of this moment, the connection between travel and anxiety and old friends suddenly seems much simpler. My friends are one of the main reasons I go places. Probably the main reason. And being with people you love calms you down—no matter where you are.