The flight and hotel were booked for two, yet I was staring at my computer arguing with an AI chatbot about getting the money back for my not-quite-boyfriends flight to Belize. He wasn’t coming. Though he didn’t say the words, it was clear through his days worth of silence. The loudest messages often came with the fewest amount of words.
The chatbot told me I couldn’t cancel the ticket. I demanded to speak to a human and they also told me I couldn’t cancel the ticket. Well, they could, but if I canceled it the flight credit would go back in his name. I didn’t want to give him the credit. Not for the flight or all the things he has done that convinced me that going on this trip was a good idea in the first place. Travel and love have so much in common; and sometimes that thing is that you get scammed.
With everything already booked, and semi-non refundable. I went back and forth about whether I should still go. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to go. Going on a solo trip had long been a goal of mine, but had made no plans to do it. Now the universe was making me decide whether I would rise to meet the plans it had for me. Sometimes you need an unconventional, uncomfortable, borderline despicable, painful, push to become the person you were meant to be and to do the things you said you were going to do.
So I packed. I knew I made the right decision when I stepped off the plane.
The island air was the kind of warm that fills your insides. It is not just hot, not just the kind that makes you sweat, it is welcoming and calming. It evens out your system and sets you at ease. It fills you with contentment. I checked into my hotel and went promptly to the bar. The bartender recommended a place called Maxies for dinner.
There I ate tacos and my first taste of many types of ceviche. I thought back to myself a year before I went on this trip, and that I had never eaten in a nice restaurant alone. I thought the me of last year wouldn’t be able to imagine that I could be not only not completely awkward, but content, sitting at a restaurant alone, staring off into space, lost in my own thoughts as people laughed and chatted around me. Eating is often an act of community, but sometimes it is an act of self-love, of care, of giving yourself the chance to experience something new without waiting for other approval.
The next day I went to the the Secret Beach, a collection of bars and restaurants on beachside. As I relaxed, someone waved. It was a few guys, coming off of a docked speed boat. I waved back, while cringing inside. They came to say hello and took over the empty chairs beside me. They introduced themselves with the slight rhythm of a Caribbean accent.
They were shocked that I was there alone. I shrugged as if it were easy. They told me about life there, mainly on the mainland, they offered food suggestions, and things to do. They ordered a round of shots and we tapped the plastic glasses together and downed tequila.
There is a strange ease that you sometimes get when talking to strangers on vacation that doesn’t happen in other settings. Maybe it is because it is not just filling up time or silence, it becomes more of an exchange of experiences, an understanding built on knowing that there is something to learn from one another. And of course, light, slight, flirting. It was nice to have people to talk to, new people, new perspectives. It was nice to have people to take shots with, less depressing, more enthusiastic. We watched as other tourists tried and failed to climb a pole for the promise of a free drink. We cheered and laughed, and I strangely, weirdly, felt somewhat at ease around these strange men, who were definitely older than me, and I knew nothing about.
So often our default is fear of the unknown. Of people who are unknown. We get caught in these loops of fear, where we other anyone that we don’t know, cast them into archetypes of the unknown, dark, and dangerous. That fear isn’t misplaced, it’s a natural defense to a world that is unpredictable, but it also keeps us from experiencing so many things. It keeps us from experiencing new people, no matter how fleeting that experience can be, it can also be meaningful. It wasn’t much to have a conversation with strangers and take a shot, but for me it was affirming. It was a sign that I could go into the world and interact, that being alone was not so lonely. As the sun went down, one of the guys offered me a ride back to town. I contemplated what the solo-female traveler bloggers would say about this. Everything about it went against all my natural inclinations, all my natural fears. Maybe the impracticality of it all was the fun.
I looked at the sun-setting into watercolor pinks and down the dirt road, shrugged, and handed him the tiny golf cart key. I can’t tell you what made me do it, what made me trust. Maybe my underlying fears of being alone were pushing any other logic to the side. Maybe it was the idea, the hope, that I cling to that the vast majority of people are just people.That we are all just searching for a connection, we are all just searching for our next story, our next adventure.
Maybe it was too much tequila and the sun. Maybe it was because nothing here, on this sunny island, coated in greens and blues with the constant chime of reggae felt like darkness, it felt like the sun. It felt like joy.
And that’s how it felt as we bumped down the dirt road, slightly tipsy, beers still in stand. Me and this man who I had nothing in common with but a weirdly timed moment in a foreign place. We saw a pool bar with tacos and decided to pull over. We talked about the US and dating. He again asked how I ended up alone and I ended up telling him the story of the boy who disappeared. I got in the pool and laid my head back, letting the water carry me as I stared at the stars. I am always amazed how darkness feels so different in different places. Here the darkness, though blacker than any, seemed to welcome me. It engulfed me and embraced me. I heard myself talking freely, laughing. I lost my fear in the darkness. I told the truth in darkness. He gazed down at me as I talked to the sky.
“It’s pretty cool that you still came.”
“There’s a whole world to see,” I said. The conversation continued and somehow ended in a poll of the bar about whether all men were liars. The mostly woman demographic of the bar concluded, yes, men are liars. Knowing this, I still let him drive me the rest of the way to town. When we got to his drop off point he gave me a slight hug and left me the possibility of seeing each other again, but mostly just with, this was a good time and I hope you have a good trip.
The interactions of the day had built my trust in people, it had made me more willing to take a chance when I had started to lose hope. Over the course of the day and the rest of the trip I learned that viewing people and places through a lens of fear and disappointment would only hold me back. Some people are meant to experience the world as it is, through the fears and limitations, through horrors instead of hopes and dreams. But from my days in Belize I was hoping for a larger vision for my life. Now I plan to experience the world as it could be. I plan to trust in the world. I want to trust in the people that are in it even when they hurt me. I was learning that trusting is just a practice of embracing fear and not being too attached to the outcome.
