A Bumpy Landing

Somehow I’ve been back in the States for two and a half months; the time has flown by, though not in a good way. This is the first moment I’ve felt up to writing a blog post.

In the last couple months of my trip, I kept changing my plans over and over. A friend bailed on our plans to meet in Mexico City, so I decided to extend my stay in Santiago. I found out the union that ran my apartment building here in NYC had a strike deadline that would have made my return complicated, so I decided to come home early.

Then in my final days in Melbourne at the end of March, I developed a rash on both wrists. I bought some hydrocortisone cream and assumed it would go away in a couple days. Instead it got worse, but by then it was Easter and all the doctors’ offices were closed, and I was scheduled to fly to Santiago. When I woke up on my first day there, the rash was worse still, bubbled up and completely disgusting—I’ll save you the photo. I gave in to the exhaustion and the worry and flew back to NYC a week early.

The rash was nothing serious, just contact dermatitis from an unknown source, and my doctor prescribed a stronger cream that cleared it up quickly. But coming home brought its own host of issues. The doctor’s appointment, with its routine review of my family’s medical history, led to an echocardiogram to make sure I don’t share my biological father’s bicuspid aortic valve. (I don’t, my heart is healthy, but doctors make me incredibly anxious.) After living in Asia and Australia for six months, with the days and nights the opposite of here, my jet lag was crippling. It took over two weeks before I stopped fighting to stay up past 6 pm and waking up raring to go at 3 am. And my apartment’s plumbing had deteriorated in my absence; the kitchen sink leaked all over the floor whenever it ran, and then the toilet stopped flushing and the shower stopped draining—on a Saturday night, of course.

Next, two and a half weeks after I got home, I got sick. It started with a horrible sore throat and swollen lymph nodes that took a week to go away, only clearing up after a round of steroids. I thought I was better, but after the steroids wore off, I felt terrible again, exhausted and unable to do much of anything except lie on my couch and re-watch Hart of Dixie. Because of the travels and my rash, they took endless vials of blood and tested me for everything from Lyme disease to syphilis. The bloodwork didn’t turn up much except that various levels were elevated, proving that I was sick. The doctor told me it was probably a virus similar to mono, and it would take a few weeks to feel better.

And indeed, three weeks after I got sick, I felt about 85-90% better—well enough to start struggling through the work I’d had to put off and the social engagements I’d postponed. One of the biggest postponements was a trip to Peru I’d planned with a friend, which I had to move to September, and our change fees, plus the client money I had to refund because I was too sick to meet deadlines (ah, the joys of freelance) meant my illness cost thousands of dollars, in addition to weeks of my life.

All of that’s temporary, though. Sitting here in mid-June, I feel almost entirely healthy, apart from a very persistent headache on one side of my head, and I’m nearly caught up with work—just one more delayed project to finish. I made it through two and a half weeks of family time, attending our annual gathering and helping my mom move to Florida, and now my time is my own again.

But some problems are more lasting. Part of the reason I decided to travel the world for a year is because I was feeling ambivalent about NYC, and instead of feeling refreshed upon my return, my ambivalence has escalated to antipathy. It’s noisy and crowded, and simple tasks like getting groceries or just walking down the street are unnecessarily complicated and unpleasant. On my way to the ATM the other day, I saw a UPS man, presumably frustrated by the parking difficulty, screaming at women for crossing the street…in the crosswalk…with the light. And I am PAYING for these joys; I could get a gorgeous, brand-new three-bedroom house in Austin for what my broken-down one-bedroom apartment costs in Manhattan.

I’ve spent a lot of time since I came home lying in bed, staring at the balcony across the alley, where a blue jay likes to perch—the only non-pigeon bird I ever see in the city. I’ve been watching him and imagining sitting in a window seat, staring out at a small yard with a bird feeder.

And I’ve had so much time to stare partly because I’ve been sick, but partly because my return has made it clear who my friends are…and that number’s disappointingly small. Before I got sick, I threw my own little homecoming bash, and about ten people came, which was amazing. But I really have only two friends I’ve seen on a regular basis. Most of my friends I see once a month or two (or five or six), and a couple friends have straight up blown me off since the party. I need to do more to try to build my network, but I need to do it in a place where it feels possible.

All of my difficulties since returning have been mirrored in the company I traveled with. We Roam (which rebranded itself as Wy_Co a couple months back, but we aren’t even going to talk about that now) went under at the beginning of May, with no warning and little apology. I had some friends who were still traveling with them and some friends who were rejoining later in the year, all of whom were left scrambling. I felt blindsided…grateful I traveled when I did and got out when I did, sad and angry on behalf of my friends, but sad, too, for myself, for the disappearance of the option I’d held in the back of my head, to return and try group travel again, a little wiser.

Instead, I have to forge ahead on my own, figuring out where to go after this bumpy landing. I’m not permanently grounded. I loved staying in a place for a month, getting a taste for the day-to-day rhythms of the city, and I want to keep doing that going forward…but just for a month at a time, I think, returning home in between trips to regroup and refocus on work after the distractions of the road. So to start, I’m roaming the US a bit, trying to find a place I might be able to build a home.

The trip may be over, but the journey never ends.