It scanned.
My passport was accepted, my bags were taken, my boarding passes printed, my parents standing across from me.
I wondered if they recognized the girl they were looking at.
Their Julia would not be this calm, she would be in tears at the least, telling her friends she’ll catch up with them later as she anxiously begged her parents for a way to get out of such an intimidating and foreign experience. But there I stood, composed and too overwhelmed to feel anything further, to say the least.
With dry eyes and a weak smile, I waved goodbye as we moved on to dawdle through security. The heat and the crowd made me sweat, but I walked on, breathing “in, out, in out”. Not much was said at the gate, all of us adjusting to the idea of moving so far away for a third of a year. It was then I noticed that we all moved on in line, feigning the normal energy that we usually radiate, tackling this monumental event as a whole, making breathing easier “in, out, in, out”. Bags overhead, we loaded in our seats and the throttle pressed forward as we lifted off the ground. We all sat in silence while the plane reached altitude, and a certain weight was lifted as the realization set in that we were officially doing it – dwelling on the fear of the exact particular things that any of us were still so afraid of while we were already doing them.
The exhausting day of travel ahead left us sitting in quiet apartments later that night, adjusting to the reality of what was happening and the tiredness that hung behind all of our eyes. I dragged my suitcases into my little room, my tiny home abroad, what should be my new safe haven. However, the shelves and blank walls felt all but comforting. Shirts I typically wore on a daily basis stared back at me from a cubby, decorating the inside with colors of myself, making it all feel a little more familiar. I relaxed as I gradually placed items of my own into a room that eventually became less of a threat and more of a promise, I could breathe again “in, out, in out”.
Life is crazy, but we are crazier for tackling it. A rather intense pair.
Life continues to teach me how possible it is to conquer any fear by breathing. Things I knew were coming for two years and things that happened before my eyes were equally terrifying but, by the end of the day, I laid down on my bed and closed my eyes. I survived – in fact – I did a little bit better than that. I enjoyed. It’s hard to understand the words “one day at a time”, since the phrase itself is intimidating. It is much less daunting to minimize the task and tackle your day one breath at a time.
So, here’s to a trip with plenty of breaths.