Talking To Myself Again

This month, while traveling alone through Nova Scotia I kept finding myself repeating the phrase “I am talking to myself again”, quietly and under my breath, which is the way I talk to myself so I don’t…look like I’m talking to myself. 

To be fair, I’ve been spending a lot of time living in the world of poetry lately, so I was at least partially aware that I was ripping off a line from one of my favourite Allen Ginsberg poems. But also, it was true. When I travel alone, I talk to myself. Both figuratively and yes, literally. As I wander museums, as I get slightly lost on side streets, as I drive alone and marvel at whatever view is popping out over whatever hill (or at the cow by the side of the road, which obviously needs announcing. To myself). 

The first time I thought of myself as meaningfully and intentionally travelling alone was when I went to Shanghai in 2014. I was there to teach English, and was, technically, not alone. I was there with three colleagues that I had only met for the purpose of that project. The first morning, as we all adjusted to the time zone and recovered from the flight, my social anxiety overtook my general, logistical anxiety, and it was easier to just go out on my own than try to navigate new dynamics with teachers twenty years my senior. 

I very carefully set out, with no smartphone, no Mandarin, and no knowledge of the city to keep me safe. I told myself I would just walk down one street, no turning corners, until I got bored or confused, and then I would walk back. I would keep myself safe. And so I did, I walked down one tree-lined street of the city as it was waking itself up, watching vendors unpack their carts and start to heat up the buns I eagerly, and awkwardly, figured out how to purchase for myself, miraculously figuring out the right change to hand over and pointing at the right thing. 

And as I walked, I talked to myself. Quietly, as the world around me was quiet, and insulated, I hoped, by the fact that no one could understand me if they did overhear. I coached myself, I calmed myself, I marveled to myself. Just as I had when I was 4 years old and learning to ride a bike, chanting to myself “go Emma go, brake Emma brake”. Even then, with people there to help and guide me, it was my own words that kept me going, that kept me safe. 

That first trip was a returning to myself, in ways I knew even on that first day, eating that first dumpling and not letting myself make any wrong turns. I had already lived abroad at that point, something that I had always seen myself as doing and as central to my personality, in the ways that you decide in your early twenties that things are central to your personality. And I had returned, defeated, and scared of who I had allowed myself to be in those years. When I had the opportunity to teach in China, I wasn’t sure if I should do it. I wasn’t sure if that was who I was anymore. 

On that first trip I spent 6 weeks navigating the streets of Shanghai, quickly allowing myself to turn corners, to get on the subway, to order off menus without pictures and hope for the best (warning: not always a success). I then set off to Southeast Asia. Alone. And talking to myself the whole time. There was a surge of power that I felt in those moments, when I was the most alone, even surrounded by truly an incomprehensible number of people. But the surge was even stronger when I found myself truly alone, when I had showed up at a ruin in the early morning hours, or on a beach that I didn’t realize…wasn’t popular. When I gave myself the gift of silence. 

I am an inveterate city person, who, when sharing a house 5 minutes from campus and fully in the middle of St. Paul, Minnesota, kept describing it as the suburbs because it was surrounded by grass. I am loud, I am a talker. I am the kind of person that the internet would diagnose as an extrovert even though I am…not exactly. I am not a person who gives themselves the gift of silence very often. Even now, as I write this, I have sent approximately fifteen text messages, and I have my headphones in, and I am in public. And I am trying not to eavesdrop. I am…not great at silence. 

And yet somehow, on every trip, no matter how near or far, how foreign, or how familiar, it is that silence that I crave. The overcast beach, the park that sounds like a tourist attraction but is really just a tree and a plaque by the side of a country road, the long way with no traffic. It is not what I crave in my day to day. But also, maybe it should be, at least a little.

And so I stash away the headphones, I turn the phone on airplane mode, even in my own country. I allow for silence. And in that silence, I talk to myself. Again. Maybe because I have the space to truly listen. And every time, it is a return to myself, even when, in all the noise, I didn’t realize I was gone.