Are We Roaming Yet?

A real-time travel diary

Jeanine Brito

*Note: I am currently travelling, so today’s bonus issue looks a bit different. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Sunday Letter, guest written by a brilliant writer friend of mine.

Here’s the part where I apologize for my delay — I’d hoped to publish a news and link round-up yesterday, covering everything from the Princess Kate news, to advice on finding confidence for new writers, to a list of links on my radar this weekend, but then. And then. And then.

As always, life got in the way. Instead, I’ve spent the past week in complete panic mode, between packing for an international trip, trying to pre-write ‘content,’ and trying to keep my head above water at my actual job. I don’t think I’ve slept for more than 30 minutes since Thursday evening. Now here I am on a Saturday afternoon, writing you a letter from an airplane 35,000 feet in the air somewhere over Florida. I haven’t slept for more than 30 minutes since Thursday evening, but did I mention that already? I’m staring at the back of my best friend’s head as I type these words to you in the notes app. My plan is to start from scratch and write for the next 3 hours until we land, and whatever is complete at the end of the flight is what I will send to you. No links, no buttons, probably very little editing, and just one painting by Jeanine Brito that I had saved already.

*

Here’s the part where I tell you I’ve been losing my mind. I want to say it started a few weeks ago, as this trip drew nearer and work got hectic and my creative obligations started to pile up. “It’s my month of NO,” I exclaimed to my husband from an Ottawa hotel room a few weeks ago, travelling for work. I was thrilled by the new opportunities, both creative and professional, and felt more capable than ever before to take on more and more responsibilities, to stay visible in both realms. But I thought I might be drowning again too.

*

I keep toying with the idea of starting an advice column, but every time I try, I became overwhelmed at the thought that anyone might think *I* of all people might consider myself enough of an expert on anything to give advice, let alone on writing. A year ago, I would never have believed that I’d be in the position of being not just visible, but overly so (at least to me, sick as I can become of hearing myself talk). The writers I’ve long admired are now only one or two degrees removed, some have even become friends as a result of this project. Does that ever start to feel normal?

I always thought it would be easy: I’d write when I felt like it, I’d publish a ton of work, I’d interview and be interviewed and I’d get to have the best of all of it. But earlier this week, as the deadlines loomed, I had an overwhelming sense that no minute could be wasted. I couldn’t start one task, because there were at least 10 others more pressing. I had a clearer sense of how my mind felt before I’d started taking ADHD medication in the fall, after a prolonged mental health dip that I can only describe in retrospect as a sort of OCD-induced mania. Even now, I can still only gesture to that time as, “back in the fall,” because I don’t remember when I stopped drowning, only that I did, and it was easier once I realized, yet again, that L would always be the one to throw me a floatation device, even when I might not feel I deserve it.

That story from Emily Gould in The Cut that ignited a huge conversation on personal essays, divorce, marriage, and mental health? It hit closer than I’d like to admit, especially in how she turned so far inward and away that she no longer recognized herself, only her most steadfast convictions.

Back in the fall, my longtime therapist asked me a question that reshaped my entire worldview as it related to my own mental health. “Do you recall having these intrusive thoughts as a child, and if so, do you remember how you felt about them, and whether you felt shame as a result?”

I almost laughed. “I doubt it,” I replied, explaining that I’d always been able to distinguish between my ‘real’ thoughts and the intrusive ones. If anything, my lack of OCD-related childhood trauma was clearly a sign that the disorder had only worsened in adulthood as a result of undiagnosed ADHD.

And then the dip. I didn’t see my therapist again for months, scared to face her in case I wouldn’t have “real” to talk about, in case I’d be stealing her time from someone that needed her attention more. “Let me tell you something,” she admonished gently at a session in late November, “everyone needs a space of their own. Especially now.” As I described the events of the fall and how I’d become convinced that I was living the entirely wrong life and needed to run away and start over, she was shocked. Having known me for over 5 years, she could already sense that I was returning to her from outside of reality. And then it clicked: “Remember when you asked me if I used to judge myself for my intrusive thoughts as a kid?”  I asked. I reminded her how I’d thought it impossible because I was always highly aware of their presence and therefore believed myself to be in control of them as well. “Well I just realized something. Judging myself for those thoughts is the only thing I’ve ever really done.”

*

I haven’t slept since Thursday evening, and as I stare down into the airport’s waiting area from the terminal above, I find myself watching a couple as they dance in the oversized baggage area. Not a waltz or two-step, but just that little dance that lovers do in public when one does a shimmy and the other does it back. A woman walks past the tall windows of the airport and refracts into eight versions of herself marching in synchronicity, snapping me out of my 4 am daze, unsettled at the sudden mirage of marching women.

I stop to grab a bottle of water as I wait for my flight. I spot a massive head of curly hair and a familiar freckled smile, and I say… “Rachelle?” It’s the parents of a childhood friend of mine, on their way to Toronto to see their other daughter. They ask me to sit, and we catch up on the last ten years. Marriage, work, family, friends. These people who welcomed me into their home when we were 6 year olds playing in overalls, when we were 10 having our first all-night sleepover, when we were 16 drinking in their acreage backyards, settled in tents under the stars. “How is she these days?” I ask about their daughter. She’s a neuroscientist, studying a field similar to my own mom. She lives in London with her boyfriend and they say I should visit her soon, see the great flat she’s living in. We pass along our most sincere well-wishes as they stand to board their flight, but first her dad stops me and says what my childhood friends’ parents always say, “You’re all so lucky you had each other. And now look at you all. We couldn’t be more proud.” A group of women who grew up together and graduated and scattered into MA and PhD programs in different fields across the world: engineering, medicine, health, law. I don’t feel like a child around them anymore; I feel like their peer. But it’s 5 am and I haven’t slept since Thursday and so instead we just look at each other, marvel at it all, and laugh.

*

L was telling me about a Canadian legal case that boiled down to a disagreement over the word “forthwith,” as it pertained to the collection of evidence. To solve the issue, the lawyers looked to the French translation of the same law, where the word “immediatement” was used instead. I replied that in my own work for a bilingual organization, I often translate documents from English into French and vice versa. As a result, I’ve become more aware of my vocabulary when writing in English, knowing that the passage will later need to be translated. Surely writing is like this too, the awareness constantly of how one might be read. It would be one thing if I was publishing these words on a website that you would have to look up to read. It’s another entirely to type it all out knowing that the moment I hit “Send,” thousands of people might see my name on a screen and have an instant reaction that I can neither anticipate nor control. I wrote about that tricky feeling for Haley Larsen’s wonderful interview series Close Reader:

“I will admit, as the newsletter grows, I do feel an increasing sense of anxiety over being vulnerable online. It’s a feeling I used to get after publishing each issue, but lately it’s been happening while writing as well. I’m reminding myself that it’s perfectly normal to have anxiety about sharing your innermost thoughts with strangers week after week, and that it’s a trade-off I’ll gladly accept in favour of having a creative space entirely my own.”

I spent over a month with Haley’s thoughtful questions, trying to put to paper my own ephemeral relationship to creativity. Other new writers ask how I come up with ideas for what to write. I explain that it involves combing through an abundance of chaotic thoughts and ideas as a way of constant narrowing. I tell L that some writers are sculptors who start from scratch with a mound of clay, building it up into something from nothing. Others, like me, are sculptors who must chip away at a massive rock until a pattern emerges. I’m the latter, and I don’t know how to be the former. I grew up around sculptors and painters and local theatre actors and directors and I never thought I was one of them until I realized that I needed their mediums to make sense of my own.

*

There’s a Kate Berlant line that goes something like, “The thing you set out to make will never be what you end up making. Never ever.”

I don’t often end up in the place I thought I was going, but that’s half the fun. I don’t always know what I have to add to any conversation until I’m in it. I don’t know how to look at a work of art without wanting to get in there and make it myself too.

Sometimes I feel like I’m half here, half there. Sometimes one side requires more of me. Sometimes both sides require all of me. The other day I found my first grey hair.

*

I write best when I’m not writing, because that’s when I’m the most honest with myself, when I’m not trying to be. But I have to move fast to catch it, and when I do I get butterflies.

It’s actually a great relief to realize you can’t and won’t please everyone. That you won’t be the first to the scoop every time, and that there’s excitement in that too. In fact, some of my favourite writers are the ones who don’t even follow a discernible ‘beat’ — they are the beat.

So it’s okay to be late to the party or early to it, to be out-of-order or ahead of it. It’s okay to be the only one in your lane as long as it’s the one you want to be in.

*

Back in university when we were so busy with finals, we could go days without fully speaking despite living together. I would invite L into the shower with me as it was often the only time we could stop to breathe and talk. I was remembering that time fondly last night as he collected my piles of clothes from the ground and sorted them neatly into my suitcase. “Here’s where I’m putting your shoes,” he said, “here’s where I’m putting your sunscreen.” I’d just come from the psychiatrist’s office to discuss how my recent dose increase has been going. I’d come bursting into the appointment apologizing for my dishevelled appearance and frantic, hungry eyes. How to explain that I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, the most clear-eyed in my sense of myself and my abilities, when my blood pressure tells a different story. “That’s so nice to hear,” the doctor says. “It’s just, your heart… It’s not slowing down.”

A few hours later I was back in an airport, waiting to reunite with my best friend and her dearest friends too. To fly to our destination, we first go east against time. None of us have slept since Thursday. We decide the airport Chili’s is the ideal place to be on a Saturday morning at 8 am. Is there anywhere more liminal? As I write this on the plane, a message comes in from our friend who is connecting through Toronto. She’s already at the hotel, reporting back that “it’s the most liminal space…”

*

We’re stuck on the tarmac as the plane’s wings are de-iced. The woman to my left keeps asking her companion if it’s time to turn on her cellular data yet. “Are we roaming yet?” she asks. “Not yet,” her younger friend replies, “not until we leave Canada.” They chat for the entire trip, and I still can’t tell how they know each other. Are they friends? Coworkers? Relatives?

“Oh, I love that,” the older woman exclaims as her friend pulls up the flight map on her screen, “Can you dropship it to me?”

The pilot announces that we’ll have to do another maintenance check before we leave, and the plane groans. The woman wants to know when it’ll be time to turn on airplane mode. Her friend tries again to explain that she won’t need it until we actually leave the ground. “I see,” she says, leafing through the contacts on her phone as the pilot announces another delay. We circle the tarmac once more, but not before the woman has the chance to ask: “And airplane mode is….?”

We’re getting closer. When I look outside the window, it’s no longer pitch white snow blinding me, but a pitch white sun. I can see prisms of light through the prairie snow, still stuck in tiny flakes to the window beside me. There’s the ocean, the one I haven’t touched in 6 years. My best friend walks down the aisle of the plane and I gesture madly for a phone charger. I promise her that when we land I’ll stop working. We’re here for her bachelorette party, and despite all of our stress leading up to today, there’s still nowhere I’d rather be than spending an entire week with her on a beach away from my phone, my mind, my responsibilities. Just us, celebrating her.

The women beside me are trying to find out how many illicit cookies they can procure from each flight attendant. So far they’re at 5 or 6, and they giggle between themselves each time they think they’ve gotten away with something.

When the younger woman goes to the bathroom, the older one asks me if we’re staying in the area for our trip. She tells me it’s her first time travelling since her husband died 3 years ago, but that she’s excited to be doing so with her daughter-in-law. When the younger woman returns, we talk about her job, her work, her husband, her friends. It’s 30 minutes to landing, and she’s been sitting next to me typing furiously on my phone for the last 3.5 hours. “Better swallow or your ears will pop,” the mother-in-law whispers to her daughter-in-law, and she nods sweetly, if a little exasperated.

We’re about to land, so I will send this message soon. I haven’t thought this through fully, sending you what is essentially just my stream of consciousness. Maybe none of it makes sense — after all, I haven’t slept since Thursday. I want to take my head out of the equation, stop letting myself revise things to death. I’d rather see what sort of narrative takes shape without me intending for it to. The end hasn’t happened yet, we’re still in the air. But here’s the end I’ll write for you instead:

After a bumpy landing, we circle the warm tarmac, and already the hot sweater and socks I wore to leave the prairies are suffocating me in the tropic sun. The snowflakes have finally melted off the window. The mother-in-law turns to the daughter-in-law and says, “Are we roaming yet?”