Traveling Can Be Harder Than We Want to Admit.

It’s amazing to see the people you love; so why is it so stressful?

All illustrations by the author.

It’s summer. For something like 80 percent of Americans, that means traveling — which we take on despite astronomical gas prices, environmental concerns, and a global pandemic. That trifecta of difficulties is plenty to worry about, but it’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about the highly specific (and irritatingly difficult) emotional space you occupy when you decide to travel to something rather than away from everything.

I offer a personal example to describe what I mean. I grew up in Portland, went to college in Washington, went from college to New Orleans, and nearly ten years later, moved from New Orleans to Chicago. My husband Luke grew up in Boston, collected family along the East Coast, and moved to New Orleans, where he fell in love with me, a person moving to Chicago. We decided to move to and from all of these places, and they have all been wonderful places. But there have been consequences.

The consequences are these: we have people we love spread out all over the country, and there never seems to be enough time to spend with any of them. This means that Luke and I have only ever taken one (accidental) vacation to a place where we did not have family…