I did it. I’m on a bus alone in a foreign country. For a fleeting second, I feel something surprising alongside the familiar emotions of confusion, doubt and apprehension. Later, I’ll look back and recognize this rush of excitement as my first glimpse of what exactly it means to travel alone in a faraway land: I can go anywhere. I can do anything. And the all-important: I can be anyone. Soon enough I’ll come to crave this feeling, seek it out and cultivate it, but right now it’s an indecipherable sensation, quite possibly, I consider, indigestion —
The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure by Rachel Friedman