robyn reads books

I am going to Scotland.

I keep saying it because I still don’t quite believe it.

There is a plane ticket. There is an approved ETA thing in or on my passport, however that works. There is a date on the calendar and a route that, at least for now, includes Edinburgh, the Highlands, trains, side quests and most likely rain.

But I am going.

This feels like a surprisingly large thing to say. Rather simple for others, I suspect.

Travel has never been simple for me. I’ve leveraged some really great work trips across Canada, but it has most definitely not been a fuck it, let’s go thing for me.

For years I have been very good at postponing myself.

Very fucking good at it.

There were trips I almost took. Trips I planned and then talked myself out of. Potential trips with my sisters, my mother, friends. Places I wanted to see that could wait, because there was always something else that seemed more necessary.

Obligations. Priorities. Practical reasons. Others before me.

It’s easy to build a whole life out of putting everyone before yourself.

So I bought the ticket.

And then, because my nervous system can’t seem to deactivate these days, I panicked about the ticket. Then some travel authorization thing. Then luggage. Checked bag or not checked bag. And now accommodation, and all the other tiny logistical details that suddenly seemed capable of becoming evidence that I had made a mistake.

But I want to go.

And so I am.

And that’s it.

I don’t think I need a better reason.

My dad didn’t make it to retirement when all his travel was planned for. It’ll be ten years this November since I last held his hand. That’s also my birthday month. And I guess that’s the little push, not reason, I needed.

And I do think Clarice Lispector gave me a little boost too. She said to flow, and so I’m trying. Really doing the best I can with that. 

Because I want that. But keep failing. Hurting myself, others in the trying. 

Fuck, I’ve always wanted to be like the cool people out there and just… flow.

So it’s not some trip to heal me or transform me or prove anything. Or find myself.

I simply want to exist somewhere else.

Feel alive.

Breathe.

Flow.

And maybe keep building a life inside me. A home that includes a trip to Scotland.

So I am going.

I get to cross that massive fucking pond for the first time.

And I like the idea of arriving in Edinburgh one morning, carrying the exhaustion of an overnight flight and knowing that for a little while, no one needs anything from me.

I will have nowhere I absolutely have to be.

I will walk outside and hear voices that aren’t familiar to me. I will look at buildings that have been standing there long before I arrived and will continue standing there after I leave.

Gosh, I want to see old things.

I’ve never really seen old.

Not like this.

It’s exciting to think I’ll get to see old stone darkened by weather. Castles. Ruins. Ancient places. A landscape that has held people for thousands of years.

I need to see the evidence of that.

And I want lochs.

Forests turning colour.

Cold air.

Rain.

Maybe the sea.

Maybe mountains, although I am not sure I need them. Seen them lots. And I have those earmarked for the future.

I want to find a pub and be warm.

I want to read somewhere I didn’t expect to read.

Performatively, of course.

I want to walk and walk and walk.

I want to have a day or two that isn’t particularly productive.

I want to stand in front of something ancient and say, Jesus fuck.

I predict I’ll say that a few times.

I might even get a tattoo while I’m there.

Ha.

My first tattoo, in my forties, in Scotland. My one boy would love it, the other hate it. So it seems appropriate.

There is something about travelling alone that I find both frightening and intoxicating.

I can walk into a bookshop.

God, the bookshops.

I can stay.

Leave.

I don’t want to disappear from my life.

Maybe this is a way to step more fully into it.

Because there has been a lot of looking backward lately. A lot of trying to understand. A lot of trying to hold things I can’t. A lot of examining what happened and what it meant and what I should have known and what I could have done differently.

Mistakes.

Regrets.

We all have them.

Perhaps… what even is that word? I say it a lot. I need to think about that sometime.

Perhaps I will sit in a café and read for an hour while rain taps against the window.

Okay, I recognize that sounds a little romantic.

Perhaps I will feel scared.

Perhaps I will feel free.

Perhaps these things will be the same feeling.

I am trying not to make Scotland carry too much meaning.

But alas, I am a meaning maker, so it naturally will.

Maybe I’ll meet someone who wants to hear my rambles. Like this one. And the many others I have stuck in my head with no one to tell them to.

And it’s okay if I don’t.

Because maybe that’s part of what I am going to find out.

That I can take myself somewhere.

That I can want something and simply go after it.

That I can be frightened and still get on the plane.

That I can walk through unfamiliar countries, alone, with no one waiting for me to make myself useful.

That I can stand somewhere ancient and feel very, very small.

And very, very alive.

There is something ahead of me.

For once, I am not postponing it.

I am going to Scotland.