I'll explain what I mean by saying that post-breakup travel has replaced the traditional "breakup haircut."

I spent years stealing teaspoons from different eateries. For me, they were mementos of delicious dinners, tangible evidence that I'd tried things and that I'd enjoyed them much. Sometimes I'd tuck them away before dinner had even come, as if the act of saving the memory were more important than the actual event as it was transpiring in the here and now. In a strict sense, it could be considered a sort of petty larceny; yet, if you call it collecting, nobody questions your motives.

When it comes to the big picture, it would appear that there are two specific situations in which we are most fascinated of "collecting": when we are traveling and when we are in love. When we visit cities outside of the United States, we collect mementos like train tickets, matchbooks, beaded items, and paper maps as evidence that we ate there, swam there, and breathed the air there. When we experience falling in love, we are therefore playing at a different sort of tourism, experiencing new levels of sensation, and utilizing new modes of translation. We keep birthday gifts, handwritten notes, wine corks, and photographs in our scrapbooks. Artifacts that, similar to mementos, acquire a greater sense of significance if they refer to anything in the past tense.

In 2010, the "Museum of Broken Relationships" opened its doors to the public, housing an extensive collection of "souvenirs" of, you guessed it, failed romantic partnerships. Outpost exhibitions have cropped up across the globe, lending limited-time shelter to assorted relics of local heartbreak: well-worn T-shirts, cracked ceramics, hand-written Post-it notes, and pregnancy tests — each submitted with a testimonial outlining its significance. While the original concept is still in place in Croatia, outpost exhibitions have cropped up across the globe. Each of them said that yes, we were there, that we were genuine, that we had occurred, and that you should look at this thing so that you may see for yourself.

I was three weeks into my very first extended vacation that I had ever taken without a travel companion when I made my way to the show, which was a satellite installation in Mexico City. Or at the very least, without a significant other who was waiting for me at home and who called me while I was at the airport to make sure I had arrived in one piece. My most recent breakup was still new, raw enough that it lingered in the gap between pop song lyrics; it haunted the margins of the novels I'd packed before departing. My most recent breakup was still fresh.

I went into the purchase of my museum ticket with a dry sense of humor, well aware that the experience as a whole would be a form of masochism designed to rub salt in existing wounds. that it would make all of the gloomy, post-relationship depression I'd been carrying around from continent to continent even worse. Inside, I saw couples as they made their way through the area. I noticed that they moved with caution, read with reluctance, and pulled closer to one another with an air that suggested it couldn't possibly be them. Reading accounts of the ways in which a broken heart may rip apart a person's entire existence took up practically all of my time for a period of time that was sufficient for the day to turn into early evening. The indelibly defining characteristic of having loved fleetingly. If I told you that it didn't hurt, you wouldn't believe me, would you?

Sam's discovery of Balkan culture gave her a unique experience and transformed her confidence as a solo traveler. https://t.co/bRxpAasL0O pic.twitter.com/svXO9Ge0CF

— Travel Noire (@TravelNoire) July 16, 2018

Not too long before I went for Mexico City, I had spent a few weeks in France performing labor-intensive volunteer work on a vineyard in Chablis. My responsibilities included harvesting, pressing, and sorting grapes, as well as testing sugar densities. I did this before I departed for Mexico City. Because I wanted to participate, I had to leave my partner behind for a total of one month. Working as a journalist had afforded me many (comped) opportunities to travel for research, participate on press trips, and write from cafés located on foreign land for a long time, so this wasn't really an unusual in and of itself. In recent times, on the other hand, I've discovered that I'm seeking for reasons to avoid being present. It was entertaining to observe my behavior apart from its usual setting.

When I was in Chablis, more so than in most of the other locations I'd gone, I noticed a change in my head. In spite of my incessant assertions that yes, of course I slept better with a partner because it has always been that way, I spent every day cutting bunches of grapes from vines that had limbs. I did this for hours at a time, telling each other secrets in my broken French, drinking wine, pressing barrels of pinot noir with my feet, and sleeping better, harder, and deeper than I had in years. Imagine that I am bone-tired, bleeding, muddy, stinging with grape juice, stumbling through a language that is not my own, and enjoying my own company. That is how I would picture myself every now and again when I would take stock. I am experiencing an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the fact that I am an independent whole and not a part of something else.

After spending some time at home in New York, I decided to purchase a ticket that would only take me to Mexico City. I had a good friend who had an extra room that I could stay in for free, and I also had a few writing projects that required me to research and write about specific locations. When my boyfriend, who we'll refer to as S, asked if I'd ordered a return flight, I could feel the disdain spreading over his face. What kind of partner would always wish to be somewhere else? Why hadn't I invited him in the first place? Why hadn't booking a repeat trip seemed like it would have been worthwhile?

We ended our relationship less than twenty-four hours later (I'll spare you the gory details; it was neither succinct nor neat nor devoid of sloppy, liquid emotion). For years, our relationship had been on-again, off-again, with the "off" intervals feeling more like periods of emotional experimentation than actual "breakups." But as of late, I've had the impression that I'm stuck, and I've been craving new momentum. I was prepared to leave in the sense that it would be permanent — or at least as ready as anyone can ever be.

And yet, the reality remains that even if you love someone and sleep next to them for years, no matter how prepared you are, you will still feel the sour absence of that person, calcifying someplace inside of you like an ulcer. This is true regardless of how long you were with that person. Even if your travel plans include a nonstop flight to Mexico, you can't just decide to forget it at home because it's not the kind of thing you can do that.

related link :https://utravelo.com/en/the-one-thing-knowledgeable-travelers

I lingered by a lighter that had been abandoned at the Museum of Broken Relationships so that the curator of the museum might light her gas stove. A paper origami dinosaur made out of green paper, a solitary stiletto, and a list of reasons to remain in the United Kingdom scrawled in ballpoint ink were the items found.

The admissions were hilarious, sad, angry, and heartbreaking all at the same time. They were as astute as they were helplessly cliché. They were unrefined, tiny, and eerily human in appearance. I have a soft spot in my heart for each and every one of these horrible folks and their trinkets. What a terrible thing it is that they will never understand how much love I had for them.

When you're in a setting like that, it's only natural to think about what you, personally, might contribute if the opportunity presented itself. For me, the answer was quite clear: a screenplay that S and I had been collaborating on, consisting of just two roles, with both of us composing the dialogue for our respective characters. We had been passing the pages back and forth between us for close to two years, secretly adding mouthfuls of dialogue while having a conversation on paper. Speaking to one another only in prose, at what seemed to be a distinct frequency from the typical forms of human interaction, we would frequently both be working, cooking, or otherwise engaged in activities that required the use of our hands while conversing with one another. When I went to bed earlier than he did, he would continue working on the draft and leave the pages next to my bed so that when I inevitably woke up first, I could add my own lines as well. It was our way of committing to constant back-and-forth, of guaranteeing that whatever buzzed between us existed somewhere tangible, and of assuring that there would be a constant flow of information.

After leaving the museum, I went to a cafe in Roma Norte and sat outside for a while. Since I had arrived, I had spent the majority of my time here, at this very table, writing in the mornings and occasionally coming back later in the day to enjoy a few glasses of wine as the sun began to set. I went ahead and placed my order for a Negroni while I delighted in the manner in which I was beginning to feel more comfortable making small talk in Spanish. It was no longer a game of linguistic gymnastics for me. When the dog's owner saw what was happening, he giggled and remained seated at the table next to me rather than getting up to fetch his pet. The dog crawled up onto my lap. The bartender came out and gave me a peck on the cheek; earlier in the week, we had sat together and gossiped in bad Spanish (at least mine; hers was wonderfully intact). I was in the middle of reading a novel written by Lidia Yuknavitch, and I felt it was so amazing that I couldn't help but grin and sometimes audibly gasp at certain flawless phrases. I couldn't help but think it was so good since it was so well written.

I'd spent the previous month cultivating relationships with the neighborhoods of the city that I adored the most. I had a never-ending conversation about playlists with the proprietor of a natural wine bar that I frequently went to at the beginning of my evenings. As a favor for the book's author, a bartender I'd met at the mezcaleria next door, I'd started translating a collection of surrealist prose poetry into Spanish. In the kitchen of his Airbnb in Juárez, a Dutch man who I'd met at a bar and became friends with later gave me a haircut. After the kitchen had shut down for the night in a restaurant close to Chapultepec that I had grown to adore, the head chef and owner squeaked into the booth beside me to continue their conversation. She informed me, "At first, it seems like everything is very romantic here." "Will you swear to me that you'll get in touch with me if you require anything?"

I was still raw, but because of that, I'd been pried open; whatever barrier had been covering me from the harsh, intransigent reality of the rest of the world had been washed away. I was exposed to it.

After the show, I had already imagined the ways in which I would sit, indulging in the sour taste that comes with the word "single" while it's still fresh, and mentally rummaging through endless, horrifically genuine tales of heartbreak. This was something I would do as soon as the word "single" became a part of my vocabulary. But the reality remained that it was completely painless. At least, not with the apocalyptic, scorching-hot fury that I am aware a breakup is capable of releasing. Instead, the emotion appeared to be rooted in a completely distinct aspect of my physical being.

I was missing something that was no longer there; I felt a palpable cavity in the spot where S had been. However, I was adamant that neither he nor anybody else with a form comparable to his should fill it in. Being a certain age made me miss him in the same way that I've missed other countries. The ways in which I missed having grape skin lodged beneath my fingernails, the bitter residue of cappuccino in Sicily, bicycle lanes at midnight in Copenhagen, and the stinging sting of February air in upstate New York are some examples. A sense of longing in the here and now, if you will.

Things that are acquired in the immediate vicinity of one's house are not typically referred to as "souvenirs." However, this script, which was a product of S and my collaboration, was not a eulogy nor a gravestone. It was a tribute to a particular setting that we had created together and lived in for a considerable amount of time, and it resembled the ludicrous salad of teaspoons that I had accumulated in my cutlery drawer. What else could it have been if not a memento of the two of us? It won't be long before it joins the collection of bar coasters, museum passes, and 35mm film prints that I've accumulated while drooling over the heady high of being somewhere else, untethered, and on my own. Everything included: the detritus of actual life, which is well worth clinging to for as long as it is manageable in a carry-on.