Travel Will Test You. It Might Even Break You.
With every trip, I'm reminded that adventure—and real life—is far from perfect.
I remember being nineteen on my first solo backpacking trip in South America, sleeping in a hammock in Tayrona Park surrounded by new hostel-hopping friends, thinking: This is it. This is life.
I remember feeling the same ecstasy—and I don’t use that word carelessly; I was in solo travel bliss —as I shoveled shrimp ceviche into my mouth on a sleepy coast somewhere in Ecuador. As I attempted to cumbia in Cartagena. As I finally reached Machu Picchu! Rainbow Mountain! A hostel dorm room with only one other person in it!
There are so many highs that stand out to me from this trip. Most of all because it was my first multi-month adventure alone. Every mini win was extra special because it was all mine.
But the lows were just as loud.
I remember laying in bed in two winter coats in Quito, convulsing with fever. Foreign doctors unwilling to prescribe me anything because there were no antibiotics to prescribe. My parents desperate to advocate for me but unable to do much over FaceTime. The overwhelming feeling of fear, helplessness, sickness.
I remember panicking as I went paintball-ing in Pablo Escobar’s abandoned mansion, wondering why I was a wimp compared to the other backpackers that seemed to enjoy the pellet-pounding rush.
I don’t remember getting wasted at an open bar in Ecuador with my cousins, but I remember the shame I felt when the word spread to every Ecuadorian relative I didn’t know I had.
And yet these lows didn’t stop me from chasing the travel high again. In addition to new stories and new stamps on my passport, I came home with travel badges that were harder to share: more self-awareness, more appreciation for America, more curiosity around what lay outside our domestic walls.
Within months of returning home, I was applying to study abroad in Spain. There, too, I shook hands with the good and bad.
My college best friend and I spent a summer in Granada tasting tapas in between class. Afterwards, we embarked on a trek across Europe, making too many mistakes and getting into too many fights. I lost my luggage, she got her phone stolen, and in another stroke of why-is-this-happening-to-us luck, we ended up homeless on the streets of Rome.
And yet that trip didn’t make me want to retire my passport either. It made me want to see more of Europe, live abroad, and travel solo again.
Every time I have arrived to foreign lands, I re-remember that life is messy. That vacation isn’t just a highlight reel. That while travel is romantic, wonderful, and worth it, travel can also be very, very tough.
Why am I writing this? To remind myself. I am a month into my Europe trip and shit has hit the foreign fan.
During my first few weeks here, I was letting myself embrace the beauty of a European summer vacation. I wasn’t thinking about work, social media, creativity, anything. I was living for the sake of living! And relishing in all the foreign fun.
But then it stopped being fun. After years of somehow evading it, my family and I finally got COVID-19.
Getting sick abroad—while watching someone you love get even more sick abroad—isn’t just scary. It’s devastating. Aside from a few lingering symptoms, we are thankfully okay now. But there were a lot of dark, intense decisions that had to be made in between now and then.
I didn’t want this to be my first story from my trip. But jumping straight into crafting the good before touching on the current bad doesn’t feel right. It feels like sweeping the reality of travel under the tempting rug.
I am still processing what happened. For now, I will share this: Everything changed after what went down. Plans got cancelled. Ideas for what this trip would and wouldn’t be got buried. COVID took us in its nasty, unpredictable grip and served up a needed reminder: our health is all we have. Without it, nothing else matters.
Time and time again, travel has shown me that perfect doesn’t exist. That misadventure is part of the adventure. It takes courage to not only arrive to a new country, but to continue forward even when its newness is no longer nice.
I don’t know why we had to get sick during what was supposed to be one of the highlights of my trip. But as I experienced when I was eight in Mexico, riding a horse that lost control and raced towards moving traffic, or when I was twenty-one in Montreal, evacuating an unsafe apartment and figuring it out on the fly—you will get through this.
You will grow from this.
You will learn something from this.
I don’t know what yet. But away from home, away from comfort, away from familiarity, the answers always come.
Just as I’m trying to embrace the imperfection of adventure, I’m also trying to embrace the imperfection of art. That’s why I started my 100-day challenge that has since become a 150+ day challenge. Every single day, I have shown up to draw for myself. I have cared less about “Is this composition right? Is this legible? Is this good?” and more about “Play over performance!” and “Am I capturing something about today that I want to remember?”
In the spirit of baring it all and being honest about this trip, I wanted to push myself to share some of my drawings from my past month’s visual diary in Europe—as well as some reflections on what I’m doing to fuel me forward as I get through this travel low point:
A peek into the process: Before we got sick and everything shifted, I had been working on a story about the thrill of taking a secret vacation. It’s that twisted kind of sad-funny for me to read the draft now after everything that happened. Here’s the unpublished illustration I did for that piece. Maybe one day it will have use again?
Where I am headed: To jump into the ocean, start getting down to business, nourish my creativity (which feels a bit zapped right now), and move onwards.
Where I am now: I wasn’t supposed to be alone just yet, but I am now on my own in Basque Country. It’s beautiful—even if I am in a post-COVID daze. Writing the essay above, and honoring the call to be true to this experience and accept life’s imperfections, already has me feeling a little better. Even if hitting “Publish” on it feels a little terrifying.
What I am using as fuel: Brazenface started as an experiment in facing fear, and boy, do I feel like I’m in the thick of it. But I keep reminding myself of this affirmation: what’s meant for me will not miss me. And I truly believe that.
Saludos from Spain,
Tatiana
I'm so sorry to hear that you've been ill -- your poor parents! -- but maybe it's not so bad to have to slow down? Reframe your expectations? Re-calibrate your perspective?
Your daily illustrations are wonderful! I'm curious, though: how large are these? How long does it take you to fill this space? Even a simple zentangle might take me an entire day (or two!), so your commitment to this daily work of art is mighty inspiring!
Hope you are feeling completely yourself, and completely healthy, very soon.
I'm sorry that you've been sick and hope you're all feeling better now. I turned 59 this August, and I admit to dreading travel of all kinds at this point. I don't know when this happened, but it might have been in October of 2019 when I returned to Los Angeles from a week spent visiting a friend in London and then my son who was studying in Florence. The trip back in coach was horrific -- honestly, I swore to never do so again.