Alone vs Lonely: Going Solo in the Land of Fire and Ice

Last week I flew to Iceland with only a small backpack and a deep thirst for the unknown. It was the perfect time for me to go. Job stresses were getting high, tensions were rising between me and my friends, and the woman I had been seeing for the last year had just dumped me without any solid explanation. It was clear that I was not winning at the game of life, and my heart was sore and festering. The only cure I've yet found for feeling lonely and hurt is to take to nature. So, I tightened my hiking boots, filled my pack, and flew six hours to the arctic by myself. I was in search of culture, people, foods, experiences, glaciers, volcanoes, waterfalls, and most of all hiking trails. Everyone was concerned about me traveling solo to another country, but it felt exciting and empowering to me. I've traveled alone before and prefer to do so most of the time. It's interesting to find how capable I really am in this world when I let myself actually experience the world. I was in a state of loneliness, stuck in my head with negative thoughts and around people with negative energy. I needed fresh air. I needed myself. I needed to be alone to not feel lonely.

I flew to the city of Reykjavík, Iceland and drove south to the small coastal town of Vík. This tiny, quiet village felt deserted when driving in from the city on a Tuesday in May. But the landscape was stunning. This was where I took my first real breath in the last twelve months. Enormous, green cliffs held their protective stance around the roads and town. The massive size and closeness of these mountains was unreal. It felt like I was in a scene from Avatar or Lord of the Rings--Lush, green ridges with pockets and crevices where birds nested, and sheep grazed, and waterfalls spilled. I was so moved by the beauty of the land that I teared up multiple times on the drive there. But somehow it was the isolated, foggy dullness of the Black Sand Beach under a gray May sky that set my senses into turmoil.

As soon I opened my car door after parking by the beach, the salty sea air poured into me, and I was overcome with nostalgia. I knew my

mother was there. I am not a religious person, and believe little in any kind of afterlife, but whether it was a spiritual experience or merely an emotional one, I felt my mom on that beach. But I wasn't there to mourn the loss of my mother. I wasn't even there to mourn the loss of another relationship that had become essential to me, but was now left to dust. Despite anything I've been through, and all I have lost, the purpose of my trip was to reconnect with myself. To do that, I needed to remove myself from everything I knew, and everything I thought I understood, and face discomfort and frustration. There I was, thousands of miles from home, alone and vulnerable, and I could feel my mother comforting me from the ocean. In reality I was more alone than I had been in months. I sat in the coal-colored sand as the saltwater burned the open wound in my heart. Alone (and damn sad), but not lonely. For the first time in a while, I simply let myself hurt without telling myself I was wrong for it. As the North Atlantic crashed onto the metamorphic rocks in the distance, I just let myself feel.

The next day I left Vík behind and drove to Vatnajökull National Park. As I passed more of those chill-inspiring mountains on my drive east, I grew melancholy. I didn't feel afraid, anxious, mournful, or even lonely at that point. As hours passed I wondered if my sadness was in the leaving. I came and went to Vík so fast! I had to depart this town that I immediately fell in love with, and although I enjoyed Iceland, it's unlikely for me to ever return. To know as I was passing by these tear-inducing landscapes that I will never again experience this exact sensation was the kind of sadness that sat hard and heavy between my ribs like a glacier. It's painful to connect to something that incredible, and have to let go so soon. But my difficulty in life has always been the letting go. I reminded myself to move on. Better things were coming, and even if they weren't, I would still be forever grateful for these moments.

I arrived at the National Park and hiked to the Svartifoss Waterfall. When I reached the falls, I stood close enough to the rushing water to get soaked. But it took me at least five minutes to realize it, because I was so gripped by the beauty of the place. The waterfall itself was lovely, spouting from a crescent shaped cliff in the middle of a gorge, but what really made it fascinating was the surrounding basalt columns that were long ago formed inside a lava flow that cooled extremely slowly. The result was magnificent.

I stood toward the bottom of the wall of basalt columns staring up and turning in circles like a child watching an airplane fly overhead. I was in awe. More and more people came and went before I thought to pull out my phone and take pictures. To me, seeing places like this is more than checking an item off my bucket list, or sending a picture to Instagram (although I did both). It's not just an image, it's a full experience. I stayed until the rain came again. It was loud here, and tourists were passing back and forth on the trail. To some, it was chaos. To me, it was peace. To come all this way and stand before something so spectacular had a way of scaling me down. My life, my world, my problems were minuscule. It was all important to me, but to it all, I was unimportant. I had never felt so alone, so humbled, and so at peace.

As I descended the last trail toward the entrance of the park, I passed multiple couples and groups on their way up the trail. That day I didn't pass a single hiker who was doing it alone. This surprised me, because I did on most of my other hikes during that trip. I wondered what others thought as they passed me. I wondered what people at home thought of me. As I was preparing to leave for my trip, friends and family were filled with questions. "You're really going by yourself?" "What if you get murdered in a hostel or lost on a trail somewhere?" "Aren't you afraid to do this alone?" I joked about most of their questions, but also made thorough preparations for solo travel. Still, I didn't feel anywhere near as lonely as I probably seemed to everyone else. Here at the end of this path passing all of these people traveling in groups or with significant others I didn't feel scared or like a loner at all. I felt... like finding another trail. So I got in my car and drove to the next one.

There was much more hiking and exploring throughout the remainder of my journey (far too much to write about at once). I drove up the East Coast of Iceland, which (as cliché as it is) took my breath away. That could have been the fierce winds that day, but I like to think it was the view. The Northern landscape didn't affect my emotions as deeply as the Southern landscape, but it had its own allure. The longer I journeyed through the country of Iceland, the more confident I became, and the more empowered I felt by traveling on my own. It wasn't until I returned home that I felt another emotional shift.

After arriving back in the states, I spent the next few days surrounded by people I know and adore. I was busy and social, but relaxed. I was also drinking too much celebratory beer, and thinking a lot about that gal who dumped me like a sack of dirt. Before I knew it, all the healing and progress I had made in Iceland was annihilated, and I could feel myself regress. A week alone in a foreign country away from all things familiar, and I had still felt considerably less lonely than I did here in my real life surrounded by people I knew. It wasn't just the massive amount of alcohol I drank that weekend, although that was a large part of my undoing. My biggest problem was as soon as I came back, I immediately lost touch with myself. I forgot that I'm strong. I forgot that I'm capable. I forgot that I don't need someone to love me back to live a happy life. I forgot that I am more than a rebound or a distraction. I forgot that I'm actually worth something, and I don't need someone else to recognize it for it to be real. I forgot all of these things, and I let myself get sucked into the loneliness of missing her, which spiraled into panic. I wish I could say my next antidote was to return to Iceland, but that was not an option. Not physically. But I couldn't allow a few days back in the real world ruin a week of pure progress and self-growth.

I removed myself from people and spent a few hours alone recollecting my moments in the land of fire and ice. Alone and lonely are different things. I reminded myself of all that I am. I looked at my life--the mistakes I've made, the people I've lost, the work I've done--and I recognized that I have survived it all. With or without other people supporting me or loving me, I survived it. The hardest part is through. But I always make it through. I imagined myself back at the foot of Svartifoss, looking up at the massive basalt columns. I pictured myself driving in Southern Iceland with Vík in my rear-view mirror as I gawked at the enormous cliffs hanging over the road. I remembered being on the trails. In Iceland, all I had in the world was myself, and that was enough. Being alone wasn't what hurt. It was being abandoned, ignored, and forgotten that prompted the pain. The memories of Iceland reminded me that loneliness is caused by forgetting where I stand in the grand scheme of things, and by forgetting that I have my own back. There is much beauty in this world to see, near and far, and only I can give that to myself. I do indeed want to be alone. That's where peace finds me. It does not mean I will always be lonely. I had forgotten that until Iceland, and I can't let myself forget again.