Month Eleven of Remote Year: Argentina
Six weeks of staying in one place.
This month has been pretty different from the last ten. If you read my last post, I’m pretty certain you’d understand why. After what happened in Brazil, my friend and I chose to leave that country and come to Argentina two weeks earlier than planned. So by the time I move to Chile next week, I’ll have been here for six weeks instead of the original four.
Our group has been living in the Palermo barrio of Buenos Aires, mostly split between Palermo Hollywood and Palermo Soho. My apartment is in the latter and the area feels quite a bit like NYC’s Soho neighborhood. Restaurants, bars, shops and corner kiosks are aplenty, most places are open late and the weekends are buzzing with energy. It’s a pretty vibrant area with cobblestone streets, tree-lined roads and old European architecture borrowed from Italy and Spain aside modern, steel constructions. At any given time I feel like I’m in NYC or Italy or San Francisco or Spain or France.
Aside from the aesthetic joys of the city and the food (steak and red wine dinners have been had almost weekly), there are plenty of things to do. Fuerza Bruta shows, club parties, bar crawls, music festivals, walking tours, day trips to nature locations just outside the city, day trips to Uruguay, or weekend trips to Iguazu Falls and Bariloche. On any other month I would’ve done all of these things and not blinked an eye. Back home I’m known as someone who hits six countries in a two week vacation; in my RY group I’m known as someone who does a side trip to Antarctica. That’s just the way I operate and I’ve loved that kind of travel pace for so long.
Except now, at least for right now, that’s not me.
Since March 16th, I’ve felt as though I’ve been on a very different Remote Year. Actually, more like the year that I started last June ended in March and an entirely different one began that day. In a clean split.
The version of me that traveled for 10 months wasn’t fearful of much. That’s not so much the case now.
That girl was living a great life, and it made her believe in all the great things of the world. It made her think she could live this kind of lifestyle for years to come, was confident about making it on her own, and that all she needed to do was leap to achieve the things she wanted most. She was cautious and careful when it mattered, but (mostly) confident and loved pushing her own boundaries.
Well, that girl isn’t part of this alternative Remote Year reality very much. Instead, there have been obstacles both predicted and unpredicted that have popped up all over the place over the course of the last five weeks. These aren’t all present now, or if they are they aren’t as bad as they were in weeks one, two or three. But they linger and return in unexpected ways. Kind of like aftershocks from an earthquake.
I’ve had problems with being around knives of any kind, wearing the sneakers that I had on that day, flashbacks each time I pick up my empty wallet that was tossed back to me on that mountain, feeling anxiety anytime someone comes up from behind me, sudden loud noises, groups of men whether I know them or not, being in a cluster of six men and two women, constantly needing to count how many people are around me at any given time to ensure they don’t equal 6 or 8 or 10, being entirely surrounded by a group of people, a need to always have my back to something, being out in areas dense with trees, hiking or anything to do with heavy nature exploration (which I used to love), having nightmares night after night of being attacked in different situations, random bouts of stress that result in a racing heart and mind out of nowhere, anxiety so crippling it doesn’t let me leave the apartment some days, difficulty sleeping through the night, feeling trapped, always feeling alert and on guard, trouble focusing for long periods of time and last but not least, being alone.
That’s a long list of things, with so much of it being in my head. And that’s probably the hardest part of all this: it’s all mental. Beth and I don’t have obvious physical scars that would lend themselves to being proof or a tangible reminder or support of what we went through—all we have is our story. So it’s quite easy for everyone to forget that just because the event is over, it doesn’t mean I’ve finished working through it. I relive what happened last month at least once a day in some form. I just make a concerted effort to not let it show.
Remote Year is close to being over, and now it’s time to begin preparations for heading home.
So while I process everything that’s happened in the last five weeks, and also re-learn how to be an independent, self-sufficient person, I also have to look ahead to life after May. To going back to NYC and my apartment, to being back in the States for the first extended period of time in a year, to seeing everyone I haven’t seen for just as long.
NYC is obviously a crowded place—8.4 million in 2013. It’s full of people that bump into you, it’s noisy, it’s aggressive and it can feel a bit suffocating at times, but it’s home. They’re my people. At the beginning of April I chose to go to Lollapalooza in Buenos Aires with almost 30 of my Remote Year friends. I bought the two day pass, ventured into the horse racing stadium where the festival was being held and tried my hardest to have a great time. I needed normalcy, I needed music, I needed my friends and I needed to feel like me again. As it turns out, that wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.
A few hours into the first day, around 8:30pm while in the crowd for The XX stage, I had a full blown panic attack. It was the first one I’ve ever had and I sincerely hope the last. I felt extreme fear and like I was suffocating in the mass of people. I was disorientated, I was shaking and my heart was racing so fast I thought it was going to explode in my chest. I managed to leave the crowd with a friend, she found an open spot in the grass, and I laid there for an hour unable to move. My brain and body were completely disconnected from one another because they weren’t communicating. A couple of friends sat and talked with me, and tried to get me to think about anything else aside from the feeling of being frozen or having a heart attack. It was the most vulnerable and broken down I’ve ever been with anyone, ever.
Out of anything I’m working on from that earlier list, I’m focusing on the need to be comfortable in crowds again. Not only because I want to, but because I have to. So much of life is about being in a crowd, being part of a mass group of people, and especially when I go back to NYC and commute during rush hour, that’ll be part of my every day. This was never something I anticipated as a side effect of Brazil, it partially doesn’t make any sense, but here we are nonetheless.
In 32 days my group will officially scatter around the world, and who knows the next time I’ll see them all.
But since I’m leaving a little early, I’m cut down to 29 days. These people that I’ve traveled with, lived with, worked next to, eaten with, fought with, loved, confided in, became loyal to and protective of, and lived a privileged, unique, fortunate life with for a year, will disperse all around the globe. Not all of us are close, not all of us can say that we really know one another, and not all of us will keep in touch beyond May 27th. But even still this is an experience that bonds us together, for better and for worse.
Once the story about Brazil went public last month, the quantity and quality of messages from my group poured in in an overwhelming way. It was to a point where I had to avoid all social media and my phone for an entire day because it was too much support all at once, as odd as that is to say. There aren’t many settings in life that allow for that kind of immediate kind of outreach. They also feel like the only network of people that I know who just get it.
It’s hard to articulate what it feels like to be ending this year. Aside from the expected sadness, and in some cases joy or anger, everyone is processing this season finale differently. Think of when you graduated from high school or college and what it felt like to be launched into the world with endless options, while at the same time knowing that some of your most formative years were coming to a close. And all the people that you had met and made memories with were going to continue on in their own lives, entirely outside of the bubble you had all created together. That’s what this is like. We’re not kids anymore; we’re seasoned, experienced, opinionated, aged adults who are ready to blaze our own trails forward with fresh perspectives.
I know I’ll make an effort to keep in touch with a fair share of the friends I’ve made, and I have plans to go and visit them around the States and across the world. But life is life—it’s unpredictable.
I can only speak for myself, but I am so ready to go home. I’m physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted.
After months of constant new experiences, learning new languages, extreme time zone changes, Asia work hours that turned me into a vampire for months, endlessly sourcing new work, living out of a single suitcase (that I’ve been wanting to light on fire for months now), learning and relearning how to live life in every country, moving every few weeks or even days, changing diets and water sources, flights that last for half a day or more, dealing with month-long illnesses, self-induced adrenaline rushes, the coming together and falling apart of different relationships, and adapting to endless new cultures, I’m ready to be a bit boring for a little while.
I will always love travel, and I absolutely plan to continue exploring every crack and crevice of this world. But I need a break. I’ve loved 90% of this year and wouldn’t change anything that’s happened, but I’m ready to head home. And find out how to blend new me with old me on old stomping grounds. It’s time.
