When I was 21 years old I had the good fortune to be able to study abroad. I like to think that I didn’t take the experience for granted- I remember being filled with excitement every moment leading up to it, and treasure the memories of those six months to this very day.
One thing I don’t think I fully appreciated until now, though, was how fortunate I was to have come out the other side of that semester virtually unscathed. I traveled alone, a lot, in countries where I wasn’t fluent in the language. Stuff went wrong- I got lost, sometimes at night, sometimes with a $7,000 French horn on my back. German cops demanded to see my passport, twice. I had to hitch a ride in a stranger’s car to get out of a sticky situation, *twice*. Other things happened that I won’t mention here because my mother reads these essays and I like to keep her blood pressure down. Nothing bad happened. I hopped on a plane in December, with all the belongings I came with plus some souvenirs, my body and mind intact, and went on with my life.
In the 13 years since that trip I’ve read so many stories of solo-traveling women whose experiences did not go so smoothly. Whose experiences ended their lives. It’s such that when I recall those experiences of my early 20s, I think of them fondly, but also with a muted horror. I was really fucking lucky.
It’s a similar horror I feel every time another black person is killed by the cops. Less muted, though, because it’s not a memory, it’s here, it’s now, and it could still happen to me or my…