It’s the hopeless romantic in me that boards a one-way flight
to London Heathrow, and it’s the cynic in me that refuses to believe in
fairytales. The part of me that still believes in true love keeps renewing my
passport, and the part of me that doesn’t makes absolutely sure that I take all
of my adventures alone. Because, I rationalize with myself, isn’t that how J.K.
Rowling got her start? Divorced and working downtown, riding by herself on
trains and scribbling in the margins of the London
Times? This morning, I have a first class ticket leaving from Paddington
Station and a little booth all to myself in the first car.
I don’t want to get married. Not now, not in five years, not
even in twenty. I want to keep exploring train stations on my own, sharing a
blueberry muffin with no one but myself, and falling in love with the stranger
who offered me his pen a minute ago. When else am I going to be this free? I
don’t have a job or a husband or a kid or a dog. If I want to just pick up and
live in a new city or on a new continent, I can. I can be in Venice or
Amsterdam or Zurich whenever I wish. I have no obligations, no one waiting
patiently for me to come home. It’s rather nice to be this alone, this unchained.
This might be a ratty thing to say, but I imagine that there are married women
out there who would kill to be me. Probably the same ones who pat my hands
sympathetically at weddings and "reassure" me that I’ll be next.
There’s nothing quite like falling under the spell of a new
city, a new time zone, a new set of street signs on the wrong side of the road.
I’ve been in better relationships with Los Angeles and Barcelona than I ever
have with a man. A man doesn’t know which streets in Munich would be best to get
me lost on, or when to cue the London rain. Nor is there any matchmaker or
wingman as successful as a late night subway ride, or a queue at a modern art
museum. Nobody is as able to stimulate my creativity as much as a cab driver
that doesn’t speak English, or a tube map that doesn’t make sense.
It’s true, what Tolkien says. “Not all who wander are lost.”
Because no one is truly ever alone on an adventure. Not with the sparkling city
lights that illuminate the coat buttons of a traveler, or the musical styling of
an ambulance and an ice cream truck that make the sidewalk hum and purr like a
concrete computer chip. There’s nothing like the true sense of community one
feels when every single person on the sidewalk put their umbrellas up all at
once.
So if you are able, go to Europe alone. Dance with yourself at
a club in Spain, read a soggy newspaper solo in Denmark. Have a pint at a pub
where nobody knows your name after a rich, fulfilling day. You deserve it.
Slurp a single scoop of gelato on the cobblestone roads in Rome and lick the
whipped cream off your plate of Bavarian crème pie. Pretend to fight dragons in
a Swedish forest, or cast spells under your breath at the ruins in Scotland. Forget
the name of your hotel and stay awake until the sun comes up.
At first,
you’ll be paranoid that all the waiters and honeymooners and college students
abroad will think that you’re strange. But soon you will realize that you’re
not odd, or confused, or lost.
You are
simply wandering, refusing to disembark from the train until it reaches the
right station.
