8 years

Most of the time at the boarding gate, you’re only afraid of two things: that they’ll weigh your backpack, and that you’ll start crying out loud. If the latter happens, you’re scared that everyone will look and, imagining their own reasons, will pity you — though, truth be told, you’re crying because you can’t explain the feeling. It’s neither sadness nor joy. Your head, like that backpack, is crammed full of things you think you can’t live without, yet somehow they become too heavy to carry. You realize that words — all of them — will come later. Far too late to be said in time.

Eight years. That’s how long it’s been since, with a blue suitcase, I landed in a dark, incense-scented airport. The streets had just been washed by a tropical downpour, and I was clutching a small piece of paper in my trembling hand, trying to decipher the address of the hotel where I was supposed to stay. Eventually, I stopped at a four-lane road that seemed impossible to cross — and I cried. I couldn’t say why I’d left home and, abandoning everything, flew away. I only knew I couldn’t do otherwise. I had to escape.

Today — exactly eight years since that night — I walk out of the airport in Laos, not knowing where I’ll sleep or how I’ll reach the city. I feel calm. I wish I could turn back time and tell that girl crying by the road that not knowing will become normal. That it’s exactly this feeling that will keep guiding her — for the next eight, maybe even eighty years.

Over these years, I’ve heard countless pieces of advice about how to travel “the right way,” and how — God forbid — not to. It seems everyone is trying so hard to be original in their own paths, forgetting that walking on a different sidewalk won’t make you a better person. Fewer and fewer people seem to ask themselves how, where, and with whom they’d like to be — if they couldn’t show or tell anyone about their journey. Maybe we’d need less. Maybe we’d let ourselves just befor a little longer.

“Are you afraid of death?” I ask my charming date, who’s about to turn seventy-three. Bathed in India’s setting sun, he grins and shakes his head. The next day, he heads off to the most dangerous neighborhoods in India to photograph how people live there. And it’s only because of him that, as the plane descended today, I didn’t grab the seat in front of me with both hands. Some kind of blessed contagion he unknowingly passed on to me. I closed my eyes and thought — if he can live without fear, then maybe I can too.

“And what about love?” asks a stunning Jewish woman as we sneak a sweet midnight smoke, hiding from the hotel staff. Waiting for the lights to go out, we’ve already told each other our life stories — the way people do when they know they’ll never meet again. I look at her and, for some reason, see myself twenty years from now. And the image feels… warm. I turn to her, echoing her voice, and ask the same question. We both laugh — strangely, softly.

My hair whips in the wind as we speed through the night on a scooter, along a dimly lit coastal road. “Trust me,” I hear him say. I sigh in happiness, awkwardly wrap my arms around his waist, and grin, feeling the beach sand still clinging to my feet. If there were a place where all these conversations could happen at once — I would never leave it. I wouldn’t travel anywhere else, just wander that same shore, talking to the same people about love, death, and trust.
But those are the happy days.
There are other ones too.

“I’ll do it myself” — that was my main sentence since childhood, ever since I learned how to string words into sense. My dad reminded me once when I started to blame him for not doing something for me. I recall that sentence more and more now, whenever I feel hurt that someone didn’t act the way I wished they would. “I’ll do it myself” — I must have repeated it hundreds of times over the years, when I found myself somewhere far away, crying that no one was there to hold my hand. When no one sat beside me at the hospital bed to watch the IV drops slide down the tube as I slowly calmed down. My own fault, I’d think, remembering all the times I couldn’t make myself stay when communication failed. It was always easier to run. “I’ll do it myself,” I’d mutter sarcastically through clenched teeth, wipe my tears with both palms, lift the fallen scooter, pull on the shoes that rubbed my feet raw, and keep going — until, when someone unexpectedly offered to carry my backpack, I had to stop myself from proposing marriage on the spot. That sentence — it takes so much away.
And yet, after such days pass, it gives back even more.

Eight years — and how much they’ve held. Things I thought I’d forget, yet here I am, and everything loops back. I sigh as I hear the boarding call for final passengers. How many times have I stood like this, wondering whether to go? Eight years, during which I’ve seen my best friend more often on a phone screen than in real life. All those years she’s memorized at least eight names that kept me awake at night. Eight years of losing and rediscovering the belief that the most wonderful thing on earth is kissing. So many years, and dozens of barely-caught flights. A few mornings when I stayed in bed longer — just because someone asked me to. Sometimes that was all it took to make me stay. Years in which I was someone’s beginning. Someone else’s end.
Months that taught me that the most beautiful people are the ones who hand you all the tools to hurt them — show you exactly where to strike — and instead of using them, you realize you want to protect them more than anything.
Time that showed me pride and self-protection don’t make you richer. Quite the opposite. Because the deepest wounds — we always inflict them on ourselves.
Eight years — and a handful of bittersweet moments when you realize that inevitably, we’ll all be the villain in someone’s story.
The most beautiful years of a life — during which you never learn how love ends.
Instead, you experience again and again how it begins.

Maybe the Agnė who’ll read this eight years from now will deny everything I write here today as revelation.
And yet, I don’t believe that even she — sitting in an airport — won’t remember, for a second, how once she couldn’t buy a ticket, couldn’t ask for directions, or prayed every time she turned the scooter key.
That rainy night, she was saved by an old man who opened his window and asked why she was crying — and, as she sniffled and tried to speak, took the paper from her hands and drove her to the right address.
I don’t believe she’ll forget that sand-covered feet are proof of happy days.
Or that she’ll forget that kissing is still the best thing to do in life.

Maybe she’ll have more words in her vocabulary, enough to breathe easier without tearing up at boarding gates.
And maybe she’ll finally be grown-up enough to buy extra baggage, so she won’t have to carry the weight herself.
That her cheeks will still ache at night — from laughing all day.
And that she’ll never find balance in life.
Because even if that’s healthy — it’s terribly boring.

And by the way, future Agnė — if you’re reading this — don’t forget that papayas must be eaten with lime, otherwise they smell like worn socks.
Don’t leave right after sunset, because the sky turns red only ten minutes later.
And remember: you’re not that special — your plane won’t crash.
So keep pretending you’re not afraid.
That you’re afraid of nothing at all.

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