Have You Been to Europe?

“Have you been to Europe?”

The questioner, who has no idea what kind of emotional embroilment they’ve caused, cheerily awaits my answer. I pause for a moment, and in that brief moment all the gin joints in all the cities in all the world come rushing through my mind, exploding one after the other like fireworks. The excitement, the joy, the adventure; they surge through me and fill me with the kind of memories only a highly courageous, independent and curious young lady like myself has experienced in her short-ish but fantastic and interesting life.

Then I snap out of it. A rye, sheepish and dejected smirk passes across my lips and I shake my head silently.

Of course I haven’t been to Europe.

As a North American woman in her early twenties, it is a question that can at times fill me with more anxiety than a late period. I often wonder whether Europeans realize that they are living in a place where every young person in the world is unofficially required to be at some point. And the longer it takes for that person to make it there, the more incomplete they begin to feel. There is a sense in which you don’t really know who you are until you’ve travelled to the great unknown, the mysterious land where every city speaks a different language and every street is laden with wonders and exoticisms only a Canadian bumpkin like me would find wondrous and exotic.

I’m the kind of person who can find excuses to get out of anything.

• It’s too expensive.
• I should take more time to think this over.
• This is probably just a whim or a phase.
• I don’t actually have the time for that.

I’m also the kind of person who spends a third of the day in her own head. Imaginary Meg is really the coolest person you’d ever meet. She plays guitar like it’s a third hand. She has had several best-sellers published, but, you know, she uses a pen-name to keep it real. Her fashion sense is a classic blend of simplicity and avant-garde. She is quickly becoming the youngest and most highly regarded beer experts in the country. Travelling to Imaginary Europe is like a Monday afternoon to her. Oh, and her sex life is amazing.

If I ever met Imaginary Meg, I’d probably want to kill her.

A year ago, I graduated with a Bachelor of Unemployment. I promptly fled Studentland and fell into Toronto where I floundered through various serving jobs for eight months. In that time, Imaginary Toronto and Real Toronto collided in a most unpleasant way. The longer I lived there, the more miserable I became. Toronto was nothing like I had hoped it would be.

And then, it hit me: The only reason I was miserable was because it was my fault, and only my fault, that Imaginary Toronto remained Imaginary rather than Reality.

On the night of my 23^rd birthday, alone in my apartment, I cracked open a beer, dragged out a pack of old pastel crayons and furiously wrote out on two sheets of paper,

“Don’t run from your dreams. Chase them.”

I taped them to the wall at the head of my bed, where they watch over me like angels. Since then, I’ve Really started taking guitar lessons. I’ve Really started studying for Cicerone’s Certified Beer Server test. And I’ve Really started planning my trip to Europe.

Like, Really.