By Amiee Zhao
Amiee will graduate from Emory College of Arts and Sciences in 2026. She is double majoring in English and Politics, Philosophy, Law. Outside of Diverge, she also works at the Emory Writing Center. She is a writer, cultural critique, and a Cantonese music lover.
I need to be sure where I am, who I am. It feels easy to shrink and be small on my day-to-day scuttles to work hard and speak in an unfamiliar language, almost waiting to be misunderstood. When 50 eyes focused on me as I struggled to battle my anxiety and piece together my broken words, I felt myself sliding down a river because the only branch I was holding snapped, as people gradually lost patience and turned away from me. Yet, I started leaning into the freedom of swimming instead of holding on.
So I have always been exploring a safe port of identification, a name that could solidify my ephemeral existence in the world. They call this grasping of certainty “identity” now. I see identity on the streets, in campus groups, in the political climate where people find a sense of belonging through the pigeonholes of identities they fit themselves in. Their voices are thus organized, instead of being thrown off into misunderstandings, through shared experiences, even experiences consolidated into unanimity.
But my voice didn’t belong to any of these existing identities. Joining affinity groups of Asians, internationals, LGBTQ+ people, etc. forced me to tweak who I was. I found my experiences vastly different from the centralized narratives in those groups. My understanding of myself always exceeded or undermet the definitions with my personal feelings. Could I be an international student? But unlike most others, I didn’t go to an international school. Could I be asexual? But I didn’t resonate with asexual friends around me. “Just change yourself a little bit,” that central voice of the groups said, “and look at all the perks of fitting in that you would win.” Yet, I hated tweaking my voice, my experience, my concrete feelings stuffed between the gaps of rocks.
What if I don’t belong anywhere? What if I’m an identity-less wanderer? On my first trip alone in Vancouver, I printed my footsteps one after another on the long slope back to my hostel — the only route I knew despite protests from my sore legs — I felt, for the first time in the long months of displacement in college, at ease. As the sun was setting, stars climbed up amidst the minute changes in sky-wraught color from peachy, coral, to rouge, lavender, and finally, magenta violet. I found my weird sense of peace in worries about my phone battery and about rumors of dangers at night as I struggled to capture the moment of change in the sky. But then I thought of the similarly nervous tourists I met at the train station this morning, a pair of couples, whom I met again at the end of the day at another train station across the country, looking nervous but relieved as we found each other. I passed countless faces as I journeyed, exchanging conversations, with words or wordless, only in the moments when we were alone and defeated by the maze of this world, the challenges and sceneries of solo travel. With each footstep I printed in my muscles, I found liberation from “identity” in my experience itself, the exhaustion, anticipation, loneliness, and mercurial connections I made along the way.
I thought that if I couldn’t belong anywhere, I might as well just choose to belong everywhere, confronting the fixed idea of identity with unfamiliarity. Previous research has been done on the meaning of solo travel to East Asian women, who use traveling alone as self-discovery as they strip themselves free from traditional social expectations imposed on them. For me, solo travel goes further. It allows me to keep a distance from any identity at all. Traveling alone, I am able to experience life as a local as I slip in and out of residential areas looking for cheap hostels. Yet, meanwhile, I am also a wandering stranger, starting casual conversations with them while leaving the town permanently the second day. It feels liberating, somehow, when I know that I don’t have to maintain a long-term connection with the people I encounter because I don’t need to develop a personality, a face, in front of them.
In moments of situating myself in unfamiliarity, I’ve found how human relationships can be stripped off identity tags and a desperate need for belonging. I don’t need to strive to fit in in the places I travel, and the passers-by don’t evaluate me in relation to themselves as I’m outside of their social web. They give me directions and walk off, or we complain about the late buses together and continue separately to our destinations. At times, I stare into the blank walls of my Airbnb, pondering if I’d feel safer with people surrounding me. Yet, with others, I could almost visualize myself sitting in the corner, peaking at the center of the crowd through gaps between the bodies. Perhaps, it is just easier to feel lonely when I’m supposed to feel lonely, that is, when I travel alone. The daily 10k steps, language barriers, and excitement from exploration also keep me from struggling with belonging.
Instead of self-discovery, solo travel, for me. brings more self-experience. It doesn’t point to a future of discovering a better self, neither does it point to the categorical pigeonhole of people that supposedly organizes the present better. It takes me down to earth, feeling every bit of awe, pain, and connection that constitutes my life. The only real thing I am certain of feeling is my steps, my tears, and the savorings of my tongue and eyes.
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