My first trip alone was in the United States. I just quit art school and was craving freedom, adventure, and finding out who I was after those four years of brain-washing. I visited the country for three months. I slept in hostels, I took cheap buses and I talked to everyone. It was before smartphones and I am still wondering to this day how I did it all.

This trip started my obsession. A year later, I left again, staying in New York for three months for an internship. A few years after that, after quiting my job and selling all my stuff, I went to the West, staying first in Portland, then driving down to California. I thought that if I was going often enough, I would meet someone or something would happen that would make me stay there forever.

On the last day of that last roadtrip, something did happen. I had a car accident on my way to Crater Lake. I destroyed the car, broke my pelvis in a few bits, and my life changed forever. The consequences of this very moment are still unfolding to this day. I have never been to the US again. I still can’t look at those pictures without feeling my pulse accelerating and my chest getting tighter. 

Exactly a year after the accident, I went to Scotland to hike alone, to celebrate my healed body and to grieve my american dream. I met my husband on the trail. I did move to another country. Just not the one I thought.