Anniversary of the End of the World
An Electronic Travel Diary
I’ve just gotten back into the city from a five day trip to Mexico with my sister. Past Me, mercifully, did Present Me a solid and changed the sheets before she left. I shower off the airport and peel back the crisp covers for a nap. My cat curls up at my feet. I am remarkably glad to be home… but.
I went to Mexico on a whim, because after over a year of living in New York I’m finally relatively financially stable, and also because in January someone I’d only just met asked me if I had any trips planned soon and my long, awkward pause before having to say “no, actually” resulted in an bitter cocktail of feelings for me, comprising surprise, disappointment, and —my least favorite— embarrassment.
I’m always on the go! How did I not have something planned? It’s a combination of things, I think.
I live in New York City. It’s Disneyland for adults. This was my dream for so long, and I’ve just wanted to be here. There’s still so much to do; so much to explore in my backyard —not to mention the labor of building a life here in the meantime.
I also happen to really love the life I’m building. On the day-to-day, I don’t feel any desire to pause it; no need to escape. That’s pretty sweet.
I do, however, need some sun.
Again, I live in New York City. Do you know what a pain it is to get out? I’ve only recently mastered taking trains to all three airports. What a barrier to entry! Or, to exit*
In some ways, without my notice or consent, I think I’ve become a… *shudder* homebody. I hate packing. I hate unpacking more! I hate missing out on what my friends are doing here. I miss my cat after one night away. These aren’t reasons enough not to go, but they do factor into my attitude about going —much to my disconcertion, it’s just not as easy as it used to be for me to drop everything and enjoy it.
It’s all of these competing factors that led to my waking up from a nap on Super Bowl Sunday and exchanging these texts with my sister:
In my defense, I had just woken up from a nap, but yes, my sense of geography could be better.
This would be proven as we met people from all over the world, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
My sister had booked herself a hostel, so I followed suit. She said it was safe, had great reviews, etc. I didn’t care. I just wanted to go.
After arriving at the Cancún airport at 10pm, the humidity draping us like a sheet, my sister and I dodged dozens of offers for rides —a chorus of “Taxi, chicas?” ushering us through the parking lot while we looked for our bus. About the taxi option, Emma, whose Spanish is stronger than mine, had aptly said she knew enough of the language that she’d be aware of our getting scammed, but not enough to argue it. Onto the bus we went.
Once at the Playa del Carmen bus terminal, we debated getting a taxi from there, but ultimately decided to walk. It was half a mile. “We’re New Yorkers!” we reasoned. It was completely fine, and kind of funny, as we wheeled our suitcases through the booming PDC nightlife spilling onto the cobblestone streets.
Sweat on our upper lips, we climbed the hostel steps and checked into our little cubbyhole bunkbeds, complete with their very own privacy curtains. We went out for our obligatory first night of vacation drink, and when I returned for a shower in the community bathroom, brushed my teeth with bottled water (fearful of Montezuma's Revenge), and finally tucked myself into the thin sheets, I thought “wow, maybe we should have splurged on a hotel.”
Here again, I surprised myself. When did I jump traveler tax brackets? I camped for six weeks in 2018; for three in 2021. I’ve stayed in hostels that didn’t even have privacy curtains! Who am I? When did I become someone who needed luxury?
It had been a while since I had experienced the particular brand of discomfort traveling internationally and on a budget doles out —since I’d felt like a stupid American. Truthfully, it’d been since 2020.
When the world as we all knew it ended, I was studying abroad in Sevilla, Spain.
I’ve just consulted the archives of my blog that had to die after 2020, when that version of myself was put to rest, too. Sure enough, I didn’t know how to articulate the loss then, and I don’t have better words now.
In both instances, my instinct has been to minimize the pain by reminding myself of how much collective loss the world endured. “People died, Madilyn,” my archaic, pointless, People Are Going Hungry in Africa logic reprimands.
My higher self, the one who defends us now, replies: “Well, grief isn’t a competition babe, and this still sucks no matter how you cut it.”
It’s true, I’ve spent most of my time since we got that awful news glass-half-full-ing it. It is already such a trope to go abroad once and never get over it; I couldn’t double down and make an experience I didn’t even fully get to have my entire personality. Wallowing wasn’t going to change a single thing, I told myself.
So I grinned and beared it. I took my consolation prizes: seven weeks in Spain and a host of amazing long distance friends to visit one day, when the world reopened.
Contact with my host family naturally petered off, became more infrequent. We’d FaceTime during lockdown, and afterwards, I’d cry for longer than the duration of the call. It was so frustrating to not be able to communicate with them, to feel my Spanish atrophying.
In the fall, I dropped my Spanish minor; too bitter to keep conjugating in an American classroom when I’d been dreaming in Spanish, translating like second nature the semester before.
I tucked the dreams away: my hopes of living abroad long-term, my belief that traveling in short bursts doesn’t cut it for me, my desire to immerse myself in different cultures, head first —all tabled for COVID-19.
I moved on. I had other adventures. I found new dreams, and I accomplished them. Reminder: I live in New York City!!!
And like with most things, time did heal. I don’t really think about it any more… until.
On our third night in the hostel, a Dutch guy entered our room and started making his rounds, introducing himself. He was Luke from the Netherlands, and he’d just arrived from Cancún with a group of others he met at the Mayan Monkey Hostel a few days before. They had all agreed to follow each other to Playa del Carmen, and were going out to a beach club that night, he said. He and my sister exchanged Instagrams.
When we arrived to the place, we met the whole cast. There was Max from Frankfurt, Germany (not to be confused with Frankfurt, Connecticut, which is a place that doesn’t actually exist but which I suggested when he said “Frankfurt” in a thick German accent, nonetheless). Stupid, geographically inept American, like I said.
Glyn was from North Wales, another place I’d have been pressed to point out on a map (not any more, I’ve Googled it, duh) and which I didn’t previously know was distinguishable from South Wales, but he told us so, in a very nice accent.
Kai was from Tuscaloosa, Alabama of all places and currently attends my alma mater there. Small world! It only took us about ten minutes to put together that I was also his Intro to Women’s Studies Instructor two years ago… freakishly small world. He made a big point of telling me I had given him a B minus. I thought he must have deserved it.
After one night in Playa, the boys were off to Tulum and trying to convince us to come. Emma was all for it, and while I hesitated (again, who am I?!) I eventually gave in because, well, they weren’t going to be staying in a hostel.
It was a really funny 48 hours we knew them.
Some were like us, on vacation —or in Kai’s case, on The 2025 University of Alabama Academic Calendar’s Spring Break— and some of them had been away from home for weeks. Max, who was on month four out of six of traveling, at one point mentioned he was afraid he had lost his travel diary. This was really bad, he said, because if he didn’t write things down he’d forget them.
It struck me in its simple truth. I had just been asked about my other travels, and when trying to recount my first trip abroad to them, struggled to remember names of the smaller cities I visited; the particulars of our itinerary. I’ve lost so many details of my travels, I suddenly realized, to my faulty memory. They still feel shiny and vibrant, as a whole, but time has rubbed the contours smooth.
Max said he mostly wrote about the people he met. At this point, he must have dozens of characters. He said he’d written a page and a half about one girl he met because she was “just so interesting.” They fought like an old married couple. I wondered allowed what I would be worth. “Maybe half a page for me?” I joked.
He told me all of this in his funny English, me supplying words when he couldn’t recall them: “When someone hunts something and it is a predator, that is…” “Prey,” I said.
I felt a secret sense of pride that I knew all of the words, and then another wave of guilt that everyone knew my language while I knew none of theirs.
When my sister and I were all showered (avoiding the hostel bathroom we were returning to at all costs) and awaiting the taxi Glyn had called us in his impressive Spanish —again: stupid, monolingual Americans!— I told the group I would spend my bus ride back to Playa writing them down in my Notes App. It’s so smart, I thought. I will never forget them or the trip as a whole, but I’d like to also keep the specifics.
I showed Emma in the dark of our bus ride back. “Awe this makes me sad,” she said.
“I know,” I agreed in surprise, “I am kinda sad.”
“Did you not think you would be?” she asked, surprised by my surprise.
“I don’t know… no, not really,” I said. “I’ve met a lot of people like this and have had to let them go. I just didn’t think…”
The next day, when I had lugged my suitcase up and down the Subway stairs, rolled it over the lip of my apartment’s doorway, greeted my cat, showered off the travel, and finally crawled into my fresh sheets, exhausted, I opened my Messages to watch a series of videos my study abroad friends have recently been exchanging in the otherwise rarely used group chat —two minute updates on where we are living, what we’re up to, etc.
I played the most recent from Becky, who I have barely heard from since March of 2020. She’s in her fourth year teaching high school Spanish in her hometown in Rhode Island. She’s getting married in December, to a man I’ve obviously never met but who seems made for her. I mean, they were born 19 minutes apart in the same place.
She lost her grandmother this time last year, and they are in the process of buying and remodeling her house. Becky always spoke of how close they were, and as I watch her talk through my tiny screen I begin to cry. It all comes back to me: this funny, larger than life presence I crossed paths with and had the pleasure of spending time alongside once, for a short while.
How could I have forgotten? The pure joy that drips from her voice, pours from every opening on her face; her openness! The girl who was moved to tears in a cathedral in Córdoba, just by its sheer beauty. The girl who would prompt our group with introspective questions we called “Becky hits blunt moments.” It’s been five years now.
The two feelings crashed down on one another; in my state of emotion, the timelines converged. These people, these absolutely marvelous characters I have met. All the stories I have heard and made and all the ones I’ve lost.
The vital discomfort of traveling; the surprising lessons you learn when you go. The sheer importance of it. A forgotten commitment of mine.
I’ve just returned from a five day trip to Mexico and five years ago I was sent home early from studying abroad. In both cases, I didn’t have enough time.
There’s still so much I want to see, so much to do! And part of me still believes short trips aren’t enough. The reality stands, I have a 9-5 that I kind of love. But Mexico surprised me. It reminded me, recalibrated me to some of my core values, my dreams, that I’d quietly forgotten.
And I met some characters along the way.
My study abroad friends still say once every six months that we need a reunion. My host Mom dutifully messages me happy birthday every year. Who knows! Maybe the people we meet don’t all have to just make guest appearances. Maybe they can be recurring characters, too.
Now, I’m going to go redownload Duolingo.
Signed, a girl who studied abroad once xxxx
“The vital discomfort of traveling; the surprising lessons you learn when you go. The sheer importance of it. A forgotten commitment of mine.” 🥹
Learning to find the balance in “there’s just not enough time” and also that we’re only just girls… not putting things off but not rushing to do them, either 🧘🏼 you know?