In April of 2018, my friend from high school invited me to her wedding in Germany, and I decided not only to attend but also to travel through Europe for three weeks after. While I thought about inviting other people at first, I ultimately decided to go by myself. It would be my first time traveling solo [1], and I was nervous, excited, and hopeful. And I was right to feel this way. The trip turned out to be one that changed my life.
At the time, I still thought of myself as a woman — although this definition didn't feel quite right even then — and I was frustrated by the constant discussion of where, when, and how women should travel. "Travel in groups, only in well-lit areas, text me when you get home safe, etc." Of course, I understood all too well the purpose of this sort of advice, but I also chaffed against it. I wanted adventure [2], intrigue, and mystery, and I set out to get it.
And get it I did.
I saw swans in Stockholm. I cried at the Berlin Wall. I ate my weight in bratwurst and drank alone at a beer garden. I went on a lengthy and overly caffeinated tour of Berlin's third-wave coffee shops and got hopelessly lost in the countryside of southern Germany. It was everything I had hoped for and some things I hadn't even realized I needed.
I no longer saw myself divided between who I was and how I had to present myself. I could simply exist as my whole self.
What I loved most of all was the anonymity. No one knew who I was or what I was or anything about me. Without the restrictions of external definitions, I discovered I had the power to define myself [3]. By doing the things "women" weren't supposed to do and loving them, I realized something that had, until then, been bubbling beneath the surface: I am nonbinary [4]. It wasn't only that I was a subversive woman, it was that I wasn't a woman at all. Or more correctly, I contained both the masculine and feminine within me.
You know that myth by Aristophanes about the origin of love [5]? The story goes that way back at the beginning of time, people looked different. They were made up of two-in-one humans — two heads, four arms, four legs. These humans were so powerful that the gods became frightened and Zeus split them in two. (It's a fantastic song in Hedwig and the Angry Inch if you want to hear the full story.) While traveling alone through Europe, I finally felt that I understood this song not only as a statement about separate people but as a reflection on the wholeness that existed within me.
On the night of my friend's wedding, I took a long solo walk back to my Airbnb. I didn't have phone service, I was tipsy from the reception, it was dark, and I walked for over an hour. I was terrified . . . and it was the freest I've ever felt. My body, I realized, was my own. It existed outside of other people's expectations.
I spent the rest of the trip in a sort of euphoria. I went on to travel through Amsterdam and London, finally giving myself permission along the way to write my own future. I no longer saw myself divided between who I was and how I had to present myself. I could simply exist as my whole self [7].
It still took me another few months before I started coming out to other people, but this trip was the turning point. I could only redefine myself in a space where I was free — in a space where I didn't know anyone and no one knew me. I pushed the boundaries of what I thought I could do and what I thought I should do into a place where I could simply be.
When I arrived home in May, I hugged my cat, who quickly squirmed out of my arms and disappeared under the couch. Everything was the same and yet everything had changed forever.