heading back to LaGarbage
panic-packing and problem-solving in cleveland, ohio
I went on an airplane for the first time since January 2020 this past weekend to attend a dear friend’s wedding in Cleveland, Ohio. I love traveling and I’d like to think I’m a pretty good travel planner and an organized packer. But I’m out of practice and I traveled alone. I panic-packed four pairs of shoes for two days away (I used all of two pairs). I somehow lost my luggage tag. I left half of the things I’d bought expressly for the wedding on my boyfriend’s dresser.
In short, I was a mess.
Something about packing and traveling this time around was just tough in ways that it never was pre-quarantine. Part of this was, undoubtedly, influenced in part by an extremely busy work schedule before I left, which left me distracted and exhausted.
Travel anxiety is nothing new. Except that this time I felt deeply out of practice with traveling and found myself questioning if I even knew how to travel at all anymore. Knowing how to travel, how to think about it and plan it through—this is just a muscle I haven’t exercised much at all in the past year and a half. It’s just another facet of post-quarantine social anxiety I hadn’t considered until I was staring down an empty suitcase with 16 hours left until my flight.
Of course, much of travel has stayed the same aside from wearing a mask and sanitizing my hands even more feverishly than I did before. I paid $14 for a turkey sandwich at an airport bar. I got lost in a terminal while trying to find the cab I’d called. I even overheard a pilot ask a flight attendant if she was getting off at Cleveland or if she’d be heading back to “LaGarbage.”
Travel hasn’t changed all that dramatically and while I’d like to imagine I haven’t changed, the truth is that I have. I’m more grateful for travel while simultaneously easily overwhelmed by even the idea of a change of scene.
My anxieties were realized the night I arrived in Cleveland. While unpacking, I noticed that a bag with half of the make-up, accessories, and toiletries I’d lovingly selected for this particular wedding had been left on my boyfriend’s dresser all the way back in Brooklyn.
As small and normal as this moment was on the great scheme of Travel Problems, I went into panic mode. I was angry with myself for forgetting something so easy. I was frustrated that I’d rushed the packing process. I was pissed I’d have to spend more money on items I’d already bought for this specific event. And I was, more than anything, embarrassed. Despite staying and traveling with dear friends, I almost didn’t want to tell them that I’d forgotten something so dumb. I tried to make jokes out of it to deflect from my humiliation, I just wanted someone to tell me it wasn’t weird and I wasn’t a shitty traveler now. I’m turning 31 soon, how could I possibly forget this easy part of my bag during a weekend trip? Have I really lost all sense of how to travel?
This was a problem that was, in many ways, not a problem. I was in Cleveland, not on Mars with Richard Branson. But given the lack of travel opportunities I’ve had the past eighteen months, it felt catastrophic. That’s the thing about panic: when I’m out of practice with something, it’s so easy to fall back into panic mode, to forget the options I have right in front of me. And in this case, being in a new city completely upended my sense of how to cope with a problem that, pre-quarantine, would have bummed me out but could have been easily remedied.
Of course, I was able to easily solve this issue. One of my friends had scheduled a haircut and blowout the day of the wedding at a salon in a shopping center. I hitched a ride with her and while she got her hair done, I went to the Nordstrom Rack next door. I found everything I needed on super sale: earrings and eyeliner, pressed powder and hair clips. The whole experience felt novel in ways I hadn’t anticipated until I realized: this was my first time in a department store in recent memory. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone to a shopping center in person.
Just like I hadn’t traveled or packed for a big event in person in forever, I hadn’t had to problem solve in this particular way in forever either. I was hard on myself not just because of the packing snafu, but because I was just out of practice thinking through my options when things inevitably go wrong. For all my anxiety this past year, I haven’t actually been problem solving in this particular way that I’d been so very practiced at before COVID-19. All of this is small, so small in a world that’s reopening while also fighting against this terrifying Delta variant. But it was enough to disrupt a fun wedding weekend, albeit briefly.
The wedding was beautiful and perfect, and I felt great walking in in my brand new super discounted accessories. I felt like myself after also stopping at a Midwestern pharmacy and supermarket chain (shoutout to Giant Eagle) for a toothbrush. For an evening, I got to forget about the pandemic and traveling and stress. I got to dance and laugh and cry a little and drink far too much Chardonnay. Even if all of this is cringe-y in its triteness, it sure didn’t feel that way at the time. And things that are trite are often trite because, well, they are common for a reason.
When I flew back to LaGarbage on Sunday night, I had two hours to kill at the Cleveland airport due to my over-planning (turns out there were only two people ahead of me in line at security). I got to chat up a waitress at the bar, eat hangover-busting French fries, people-watch, and eat a shareable bag of M&Ms without sharing. The flight was slightly delayed, and I didn’t panic. It was, strangely enough, kind of fun, even if airports can feel like purgatory.
I knew that I was out of practice, but not completely out of my element.
Also! You can read my work on the 15th anniversary of “The Devil Wears Prada'“ in this month’s issue of Bitch Magazine. If you’re interested, check it out here.