used to spend weekends watching The Real World. I used to spend weekends watching episodes I'd already seen. I used to spend weekends watching episodes I'd already seen and didn't even like. I would think about maybe not drinking for a while. I would think about writing a book, about going somewhere.

It wasn't so sad. I had a great roommate, a beautiful gay man who cooked for me and signed his emails "Your boyfriend." We attended important dinner parties together and he drove me home as I slumped in the passenger seat, drunk and chatty. Or maybe I used to watch The Real World back when I lived alone, when I ate frozen dinners, when I drove myself home from dinner parties and woke up regretting everything. I can't remember now. I watched a lot of Real World. Hawaii was a particularly fertile season.

Anyway, it was watching The Real World that I first got the idea to travel. The New Orleans group (a blah season, if you ask me, painfully camera-conscious and dumb) had gone to South Africa. David was struggling with his blackness. Melissa was struggling with her emerging artist. Julie was struggling with her virginity, probably, or her Mormonism, or her gloppy pink lipstick. Never mind. It was Africa. And then my mind was stuck in it, hoping I could leave, knowing I probably wouldn't, scared of wanting anything anymore and hating myself for that.

That summer, I left for South America. Then last spring, I left on this roadtrip. I got back two weeks ago, and I'm broke and I'm tired and all of it leaves me feeling anxious, like a college kid, new in the world, stealing condiments from restaurants, saving up my laundry for my parents' house. Right now, I can't tell you what I've learned or what I saw or what I think, because I'm too busy trying to make enough money to cover my outrageous cell phone bill (Lesson Number One: Do not call from Canada) and pay back friends who were generous enough to spot me cash and will never say anything, I know they won't, will only smile and be wonderful and make me want to buy them mansions or at least hot fudge sundaes if only, you know, I wouldn't have to borrow the money to do it.

Over the past year, I've heard from a good number of people wanting to travel. Maybe they don't like their job or maybe they don't like their girlfriend or maybe they don't like their aloneness or maybe they're just restless, ready to see something new. Hey, I've been there. I remember how divided I felt, how clueless and skeptical. Change is hard. A hundred people had to convince me I could do this before I finally realized that I could. So all I want to say is that if you are wanting to leave, I hope you do. I hope you leave and never come back, or leave so that you can finally come back, better this time, or leave so that you don't ever wind up on the couch, wondering. Even if it makes you broke, I hope you go. Even if it seems impossible, I hope you go. Even if you have to plan for a year, have to hold four garage sales. Even if it will rip you from everything comfortable and be terrifying and taxing and everyone tells you that you're crazy, you must be crazy, I hope you go.
I hope you go, I hope you go.

written in Austin, Texas