When a Black woman travels after trauma

Content warning: mentions of death and graphic descriptions of natural disasters.

The smell is what lingers with me nine months later—a mixture of toxic black smoke and its parting gift dense soot making my home look more like a site of destruction than respite. The smoke and soot covered everywhere, dancing from downstairs where it originated in the living fireplace, covering this little world within itself with a dark fog. I didn’t realize then that the lack of visibility as I ambled downstairs from my bedroom—where I had to be rescued from by multiple firefighters—that this would be a metaphor for life ahead.

Being displaced from the only stable home I have known, the home I grew up in as a child, the home I have called mine when I moved back to Atlanta almost eight years ago, the home I have been entrusted to look after while my parents moved on to other cities, caused an identity crisis. Who was I if this wasn’t the one place of certainty I could count on in this world?

I wondered this as insurance informed us the entire house would have to be packed up, cleaned and repainted before it was safely inhabitable again due to widespread soot damage. They didn’t know how long it would take but the estimate was at least a few months. I packed my belongings at the end of March and decamped to a nearby Holiday Inn Express.

Uncontrollable noise then became the one thing I could count on. Vacuum cleaners roared for hours on end each morning starting around 9 a.m. when housekeeping started doing their cleaning rounds. Doors slamming from other hotel guests. Background noise from TVs that were too loud. The ding from the elevator arriving at my floor and whisking other guests up or down in the hotel. Noise so loud I could barely think or sleep.

Letting go of normalcy as I endured through displacement that seemed to have no end date in mind felt like another grief to hold. There were many mornings and many nights where I pondered how I had survived and what would’ve happened if I didn’t. I smelled the smoke as I slept but thought it to be something burning in the oven. I turned over, ducking my head under the sheets.

That notion of sensory annoyance might’ve saved me—the firefighters said smoke inhalation could’ve knocked me unconscious if another few minutes had passed. How could've been so careless and so passive? How had I not jumped up to investigate? How had I been granted the miracle of life instead of succumbing to death? How was I still here? Being this close to death—my own and not the suffering of the death of those beloved— had changed me.

I looked to Europe—London and Madrid as places to plant my worries and my obsessions about life, death and existing in the gaps of both. I sold my car because being traumatized robbed me of my ability to function let alone work. I was so behind on everything—the money from selling my car gave me a little breathing room and the ability to float doing what I loved.

Traveling to London for the first time since before the pandemic felt odd but I had a Beyoncé concert to look forward to with two of my sisters. We traipsed over London eating ramen, shopping, takeaway sushi, watching Netflix in our shared Airbnb, late night cocktails.

Being away from the devastation and emptiness of not temporarily having a home to go to felt like a blessed reprieve but even in many moments I felt the rush of the devastation I had been harboring. There were anxiety tunnels—making small decisions felt life or death often ending in panic attacks. All of a sudden, existing in the wider world beyond a hotel that robbed me of all my energy felt like too much.

But Spain. Time and time again, Madrid has been my grounding space and my levity. I leap there when I feel overwhelmed because I can reconnect to the magic of self-realization. There I am only me without the distractions and projections of what this world tells me I cannot exist as within this feeble, often extraordinary human form.

There were moments of magic in Madrid: eating Ecuadorian food at a restaurant close to my Airbnb, taking a Zoom call for an initial meeting with a Black woman literary agent who I signed with weeks later, going to my favorite taco spot and gorging on them late at night, taking trips on the Metro that I remembered how to navigate like muscle magic. I walked the streets listening to Beyoncé in my headphones and felt in step with myself and life again, even as the panic attacks and incessant moments of fear and anxiety continued.

I felt I needed something new, a new experience. The comfort of Madrid felt restricting after a week. Using hotel points, I’d saved I booked a bus ticket in the wee hours of the morning to Murcia, hours away in the south of Spain. I swam in the hotel pool conversing in Spanish with other hotel guests about living in America and drank tinto de veranos poolside.

As my weekend came to a close, I booked a train to Valencia, a city I’d wanted to visit for years. Stepping outside the train station enlivened me, as the sun sparkled and the palm trees swayed in the heavy heat. I excitedly chatted with my Uber driver in Spanish about being an author and my book I’d written on grief. He agreed that writing about grief is important and made a note of my name to buy my book. I knew Valencia was the birthplace of paella and made a quest to eat paella and hours later inhaled lobster paella all on my own. This is why I travel, I told myself.

Ending my Spanish jaunt in Barcelona felt right—I’d looked up a restaurant that had great tapas and ended up sitting next to a middle aged woman from Europe who was traveling solo as a treat to myself. She wished me well as I parted after numerous glasses of cava. The next day, I flew back Stateside. Back home in an empty, regenerated home with the realities of being displaced now behind me was sobering.

I have carried those moments of adrenaline during my short time on the road as a reminder that despite pain, trauma and darkness that there are still parts of me to be gathered. Even if it means I have to dig a little deep.