Hey, it’s me, Sarah. And this is Note to Self, a newsletter where I unpack whatever’s been in my notes app, tweet drafts, or group chat lately. Today, it’s a story from last summer.
It’s August of 2022.
I am crawling up a dusty Portuguese mountain in a rental car that is not exactly suited for such terrain. With a horrific sound, I scrape the bottom of the car on a patch of rocks, again, and nervous sweat starts to prick at my temples. The path forward is uneven, narrow, and very steep. If a car came down the mountain toward me, I’d have to reverse through at least one switchback to let them pass.
I begin to crunch the numbers on the worst-case scenarios. By far the worst outcome is that me and the car tumble right off the mountain, bouncing off each spindly switchback behind us until we land on the highway, a pile of mangled silver metal and white woman. The second-worst-case scenario, according to my calculations, is that the car gets stuck, in which case I would have to hike the rest of the way to the hotel and figure out how to unstick it. In this scenario, I’d almost definitely miss my 9 am car return deadline tomorrow morning, and my bus to Spain. All of this would be made harder by the fact that I only know seven Portuguese words, including “tooth” and “paste.” The sweat from my temples is beading and slipping down my face now.
Quickly generating what-ifs and worst-case scenarios is a gift of mine. Dismissing them long enough to function properly is a new skill I’ve been paying a highly specialized therapist to teach me. Mostly this involves repeating, “Whatever happens, I will figure it out,” and getting on with life as if I haven’t just imagined what it would feel like to bounce down a mountain in a car.
I have to keep moving, mentally. These are the rules. Fearful thoughts may enter the chatter of my mind, but I can’t feed them with my attention. I am stunned to report that this works. That my mind, and maybe yours, can be redirected. Imagine my shock to spend weeks on a waiting list and [redacted] out-of-network dollars only to learn that the secret to getting over the fears you can’t stop thinking about is, “stop thinking about them.”
Anyway, I have to keep moving, mentally, and right now that means physically as well — up and over the mountain. I give the gas a gentle nudge, careful to accelerate evenly so that I don’t dig myself into the dirt. The car hums for a few seconds and then bounds up over the last of the bumpy terrain.
I pull into the sloped parking lot and exhale. Suddenly, the brief discomfort of my ascent feels laughable. In fact, I do laugh as I unwrap my white knuckles from the steering wheel and wiggle my jaw loose. “That was silly,” I think, reaching for my bag in the passenger seat, “there was no need to worry!” Just as my fingers make contact with my purse I realize, with immediate, crystal clarity, that I do not have my passport.
A hot, numb panic strikes me in the face. I know exactly where it is. Several towns West of the mountain I’m parked on, in a sunny little Airbnb, in the top right dresser drawer, there’s a Glossier bubble wrap makeup bag. Inside that bag is my passport. “Shit,” I whisper, slamming the car door shut.
It took me an hour and a half to get to this parking lot. If I turn around right now, I can get back to the last Airbnb by 5 pm, and I might be able to get back up this mountain again before dark. I briefly imagine climbing up here with only my headlights to guide me, and just as quickly dismiss the thought. Adrenaline is taking over and I’m starting to think in clipped lists: “Drop off your bags, call the Airbnb, start driving. Drop off your bags, call the Airbnb, start driving.”
I check in with the hotel owner. She shows me to my room which has a stunning view of the mountains and overlooks the hotel pool. I am briefly annoyed that I will not be able to lie out in the sun, but this is the least of my worries. “Drop off your bags, call the Airbnb, start driving.”
Back in the car, I blast the AC for a moment while I call the Airbnb. Voicemail. I message the host instead and then hit shuffle all on a playlist I made for this trip called, “hot & self-actualized bops.” Getting back down the mountain is much easier. I wonder if the adrenaline is making me a better driver, or if down is just easier than up.
This is my first time traveling alone and I am one week into a six-week trip. It began in Lisbon. I wandered around the city for a couple of days eating ceviche and bifanas, and drinking pisco sours. I lay by the pool, sunburned my ass, and devoured a romance novel. On my last morning in Lisbon, I took a cab to the train station and picked up a rental car and then I drove down the coast to Lagos. I chose the long route so that I could see the ocean for as much of the drive as possible.
My only goal for my time in Lagos was to find a bottle of orange wine and lie on the beach, which is exactly what I did. Each morning, the Airbnb host would leave a brown bag lunch in the communal kitchen on the property — a series of rustic apartments sprawled over a rural hill, just back from the ocean. I’d take my brown bag and towel to the beach just a few minutes away, and swim and nap in the sun until I was ready to return to my wine. It was perfect, though I had to coax myself into enjoying it.
Traveling alone has come with a few learning curves, and not without a bit of anxiety. Wandering around a city by myself felt anonymous and sexy. But it was strange laying on the beach by myself while couples and families talked and splashed nearby. There was no one to double-check my sunscreen application or to watch my bag while I swam, which left me with a lot of worst-case scenarios to consider. By my last day on the beach though, I had mostly settled into the pleasure of my solitude. That last night, I curled up in the hammock outside my room and sipped my orange wine from the bottle, tearing off big hunks of baguette and cheese for dinner.
Provided I find my passport, I’ll leave Portugal tomorrow morning and head to Seville. I’ll stay one night and then I’ll go to France. Finally, I’ll meet friends in Italy, Greece, and England. I’ll end the trip in the Netherlands, by myself again.
For most of the pandemic, I lived in the Netherlands. It was at this time in my life that my mental health sunk into its deepest disorder. I was lonely and lost. My unhappiness and anxiety eroded every good idea I once had about who I am. And then, I got my heart broken. Smashed, really.
One week post-breakup, I had ejected myself from Europe and landed back in New York. I was in pretty rough shape, but something fundamental had changed. Suddenly, it was easy for me to push through the chatter of my anxious mind. I couldn’t afford to bother with hypothetical what-ifs because I was too busy dealing with the “oh shit” of my real life — all the stressful logistics of moving countries, starting over, and recovering from a breakup.
I felt deeply unlike myself, in a good way. “How interesting,” I thought, “that your anxiety was so real and so all-consuming until you had your hands full with actual, real-life problems.” I was sturdied by this revelation: none of the preemptive anxious chatter mattered, and when everything really did fall apart, there was a quietly capable woman ready to take the wheel and drive me up the mountain. She was me.
That’s when I started planning this trip. I wanted to avenge my stolen dreams of traveling Europe, and also the version of myself that I became when I lived here. This entire trip feels “unlike me,” or, unlike that version of me, by design. I’m here to dispel some of my bad ideas about who I am and to prove some better ones, like, that I am capable of plotting and following a path instead of reacting to one. Or, that I respect my own desires enough to pursue them, even when it’s intimidating, uncomfortable, or lonely. Perhaps most of all, I want to prove that I am brave enough to enjoy my life.
As I race toward my passport, I can feel flashes of that capable woman, striking down what-ifs with a vengeance. “What if I can’t get into the Airbnb? What if I can get into the Airbnb but my passport is gone? What if I can’t leave the country? What if I have to get a new passport?” I slap the steering wheel with the heel of my palm and my voice fills the car. “Oh my fucking god, you will figure it out! This is it. This is the ‘I‘ll figure it out’ part of ‘whatever happens, I’ll figure it out!’ These are your out-of-network dollars at work!” My eyes burn but there are no tears. “People lose their passports on vacation all the time and there are solutions in place for that problem. You have not invented a new form of failure!” I let out a sharp exhale and there is a long, rare moment of silence in my mind. “You’re doing great. You’re figuring it out.”
I am equal parts proud of and irritated with myself, but I am also making good time so I pull over for Burger King and check my phone. I have a message from the Airbnb host: “Hi, Sarah. The housekeeper found your passport. She will be at the property until 17:00.” I run back to the car with my sandwich and furiously eat while I drive the last 45 minutes.
The sun is just starting to grow heavy and sink toward the horizon. It’s 4:45 pm (or, 16:45) and I’m pulling up the long gravel driveway of the Airbnb. The front door swings open and a tiny woman emerges, holding my pink Glossier bag above her head. I hear myself gasp as I throw the car in park and run the rest of the way to her. “Obrigada!” I squeak, hoping the pitch conveys my embarrassment and an apology.
My heart is racing as I sit back down in the driver’s seat and open the bag. My vaccine card and a stack of emergency money are tucked into my passport. “Jesus Christ you are so lucky,” I whisper to myself, zipping the bag shut again. And then I remember why my passport is in this bag, to begin with.
At the start of this trip, I had been keeping my passport, vaccine card, and extra money in a clear ziplock bag so that they would stay together, dry, and easy to find with a roving hand in the depths of my Baggu tote. But when I got to Lagos, I wanted to put my phone and car keys in a ziplock bag so that I could bury them in the sand under my towel and swim without worrying that someone would take my things. So, I shifted all my carefully packed belongings around: I took out the jewelry in my Glossier bag and put it in my makeup bag. I took my passport out of its ziplock and put it in the Glossier bag and then tucked it into a drawer for safekeeping. Finally, I put my phone and keys in the empty ziplock and went to the beach.
Hoisted by my own anxious-ass petard. Risk is, I know, endemic to life. We all take our liberties and our precautions — I wasn’t necessarily wrong to worry about my things getting stolen. And this is what I wanted: to prove to myself that I could reach for the joy on the other side of my comfort zone. As promised, there was discomfort. But it strikes me now, as my heart slowly returns to its resting rate, that the greatest discomfort I’ve faced so far on this trip, I caused myself. And for what? Even as I swam on that perfect beach, my ziplock buried in the sand, I still struggled to let go of the what-ifs.
Here I am. I have all my important belongings in my hands: my phone, my passport, my wallet, my keys, and myself. I did not lose my composure except for briefly talking to myself, which, no one even needs to know about. When what-ifs surfaced, I redirected my focus to the task at hand. And, I wasn’t even that mean to myself about this, all things considered. Now, tucking my Glossier bag back into my purse, I let out a long string of obscenities and burst into tears, not really about the passport, but about who I am as a person for worse and also for better.
I make a three-point turn toward the mountain. In my rearview mirror, the sun is slowly dripping its liquid gold onto the hills behind me. I put the song “Fireworks” by Mitski on repeat and then I hit the gas and scream-cry the lyrics for a very long time.
It’s nighttime now. I’m sitting on the balcony of my hotel room, nursing the last of my orange wine. I’ve been out here for an hour at least. The children and families have all climbed from the pool below and into bed. The only light is from the moon and the pool’s turquoise tiles, the only sound is a symphony of crickets and a vacuum rumbling around on the pool’s floor.
I put on my swimsuit and tiptoe down the stairs, into the water, and out to the pool’s infinity edge. Hanging my chin on the tiles, I wonder up at the moon. Will it take me my entire life to get out of my own way? Will I ever let go long enough to become that capable, clear-minded woman I meet now and then? The pool vacuum is climbing up the wall beside me now, and it occurs to me that I got back up the mountain without even thinking about it. I forgot to worry, and my second ascent of the day passed without incident. I let out a quiet laugh and rub my eyes. “That’s just like you,” I whisper to myself.
xx,
Sarah
Keep climbing…..you’re doing great♥️