Fearful Flights
Poikkijarvi, Sweden
The moment I first mention my travels, the question inevitably comes: ‘Aren’t you scared?’
I am a girl in her early 20s who travels alone. The truth is: I am afraid. And I think I would have to be a bit of an idiot not to be.
The week before I fly out, I devour ungodly amounts of sugar despite my stomach doing more flips than a professional gymnast. My mind plays me a horror movie with a broken off switch: me, lost and alone as I step into danger I hadn’t seen coming, me, attacked on some street I hadn’t known was dangerous, me, never able to return to my loved ones or never returning to the person I had been.
Yet, I board the plane anyway.
Because what's the other option? To make my decisions based on fear? To wait indefinitely for someone to come with me or until I don’t feel afraid and to potentially never experience my dreams? To lock my door, close the curtains and hope that the world can’t see me?
The truth is the world is not always a safe place and that isn’t something I can control. It would be a lie to say that I’ve always felt safe on my trips. I have been lost abroad without a working phone, walking for hours trying to find a solution or someone willing to help me. I have jumped out of a car while stopped in traffic and ran with my friends like the alternative may be being sold to the highest bidder. I have spent the night in a reception chair rather than going back to a dorm where men had made me feel unsafe. I have clung to a mountain in a storm, completely shrouded in fog and buffeted by wind, believing I might be blown away.
Gimmelwald, Switzerland
I have also gotten myself through all of it.
I have seen and done so many things that I never would have if I had waited for someone else or let worry hold me at home. I have picked wildflowers on mountains and I have danced in foreign streets. I’ve found friends in towns that I didn’t know existed and I’ve gotten rides and gelato from generous strangers in moments when I had deemed the world to be unmanageable.
Travel reminds me that the world is scary, but it is also kind. And while I am scared, I am also more capable than I believe myself to be.
This belief in myself leaks into every other part of my life. I see it when I don’t hesitate on a day at work handling one problem after another and I feel it in the breath I take before pressing send on the message to a guy I like. Travel is a huge part of my blind belief that no matter what comes my way, I can handle it.
I know that by the end of each trip I will emerge more confident in myself and more in love with life. And that is worth the price of fear to me.
Wicklow, Ireland
Writer and Photographer: Shannarra Lupardo
Editor: Minahil Amin