Before I went to California there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing over whether it was a good idea. There were a few factors: after Colombia I seem to have developed some sort of post-shitshow travel anxiety, plus at 31 I was unsure whether I’d be able to keep up with the debauchery I felt sure Annie would have planned for her birthday.

But money was the main issue. I have so little these days. Not wanting to cancel and let Annie down, I made lists and budgets and tried to schedule lessons that I could teach while out there, messing stressedly with intricate transatlantic timetables, juggling and rearranging the lesson plans of 30-odd students while also trying to fit into their timetables and working hours. It drove me half mad, was all I could think about for days. In the end I came to the morose realisation that I couldn’t go; no matter how tightly I planned my budget, there was no way I could go without crippling myself ahead of Christmas. Even on the most frugal, thrifty of budgets, it would take me months to reach baseline safety once again.

I broke the news to Annie by text one night two weeks ago. I wrote it out, edited it, deleted it, wrote it out again, and finally sent – and then, filled with guilt and sorrow, put my phone face down and went to sleep.

I awoke to a run of disbelieving heartbroken messages from my friend. It was worse than I’d feared – I had expected her to be disgruntled, annoyed even, but I didn’t realise how much she valued my company; I didn’t realise my worth in her eyes. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I never dare assume I take up an important space in anyone’s life, really. But I think I must have known it on some level, because if I thought she didn’t care, that it didn’t matter to her, I’d never have worked myself so hard, lost so much sleep, to try and make it happen. I got ulcers from the stress.

But then, something unexpected: without waiting for a response, Annie sent me the cost of a month’s rent. “Pay it back whenever”, she said. “I don’t care, just get here and I’ll look after you. I’ve got you, boys.”

This was a shock. I don’t like to borrow anything, especially from friends. But Annie was adamant. I accepted, hesitantly, squinting into the future with the eye of my mind to try and see any possible eventuality where this might be a danger, a regret, a bad idea. But I can never see further ahead than a week; there are too many variables, and all the unknown blindsides besides. So I took the money – I said yes.

With the financial problem resolved, the only remaining issue was my own anxiety: fear of the unknown, fear of America, fear of late nights, fear of dark bars and unfamiliar faces. They are fears I never knew as a younger man, because as a younger man I’d lived less and seen less and had experienced far fewer disasters. Experience is good for you, yes, but it brings with it memories that sting, and in their wake the imagination runs wild with what-ifs and never-agains.

But I had to go – I knew it. I exist in peace in London, in comfort and often in quiet – I teach, I exercise, I eat, I watch films, I play video games. I don’t run around like I used to, I shun the night for daylight and park walks. I never wanted to calm down. Railed against it, even. But the irony evident at the beginning of my fourth decade is that in raging against the idea of a calm life – in chasing chaos so tirelessly for so long – I’ve wound up craving peace above just about anything. The one avenue I was never interested in exploring.

I feared that going to San Francisco would shatter my peace, in any of a hundred ways. And of course I know that inevitably, on some level, it would. You can’t travel halfway around the world and bring your bubble with you. But I’d grown too used to my bubble, my comfort and routine. And the longer you stay inside your comfort zone, the more it shrinks to contain you. Things you could once do with ease become scary, so you do them less, and they become scarier still, so you cut them out. And soon enough you cut something else, and something else – just innocently, harmlessly, seeking an easy ride – until whole wings of your inner castle are sealed off and cobwebbed. You diminish in your comfort zone, and the only way to prevent it is to fight back: to do things that scare you; to prove to yourself that the world isn’t out to get you; to remember how it felt to move.

I didn’t want to shrink, I didn’t want to roll over, I didn’t want to let down my friend. So I woke up on the 21st of November and I took a train to Heathrow.

*****

Christmas in an airport always reminds me of movies: Love Actually, The Holiday. Passengers in jumpers and scarves, sitting on seats eating sandwiches with their bags beside giant Christmas trees and fairylights. It’s exciting, but not in any adrenaline sort of sense; it’s not giddy. It’s something wholesome – a feeling of impending safety, returning home. I hijacked the feeling, soaking it up for myself as I sat there on my own bench eating my own sandwich, even though I was flying directly away from my home into a lot of Christ-knew-what. I could pretend, to calm myself.

On the plane I got a window seat, which I always hate because I don’t trust my bladder over long spans and I am far too person-conscious to feel comfortable asking two whole humans to get up every time I need to use the bathroom. To make matters worse, my window seat didn’t even have a window. The portholes – no idea who designed it this way, bastard – don’t line up perfectly with the seats. Every ten, fifteen seats or so, there’s an odd one out, and some poor sucker (me) ends up crammed between a stranger and a blank white bit of plane-wall for eleven hours. The window available to me was a mere two-inch slit that I could gaze through if I pressed my cheek against the seat in front. Consequently I was very uncomfortable and drank five mini-bottles of red wine over the course of the flight in an ultimately fruitless attempt to knock myself out.

We flew over Sheffield, and I thought about Sam and Marcus and how it felt to live in Sheffield. We flew over Leeds, and I took a photo and thought about how strange it was to know that almost my entire family was contained in it (minus Charlie). We flew over Newcastle, and I didn’t think much because by that time I was quite drunk. Two hours later I paused my film to crane my neck and look out of the window of the seat in front of me and saw snow, endless snow in drifts and mounds, not a tree in sight anywhere, nothing at all but white – and I checked the map and learned I was looking at Greenland.

My window was tinted by now – they do it to try and coax you to slumber, dropping you in step with your arrival destination – and I wanted to see Greenland properly, so I said excuse me and sorry sorry sorry thank you sorry and got out of my seat to use the bathroom and then peer out of the stewards’ porthole at the back of the plane, the only one still in full daylight.

“It’s Greenland,” said the stewardess.

“No way!” I said despite already knowing this because I wanted to appear appreciative.

“I’ve never flown this route before,” she said. “It’s beautiful isn’t it? We flew over Egypt last week and I saw the Pyramids. And the Grand Canyon the week before that.”

I went back to my seat and wondered if I would be a good air steward, and then decided that I probably wouldn’t because I’m scared of flying and every time the plane hit a bit of wobbly air I would throw my hands in the air and scream. Then I watched another three movies and rotated my ankles to avoid getting circulation problems and dying, and slowly Greenland turned to ocean turned to Canada turned to USA. I saw the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains and Wyoming and Salt Lake City, and finally after 11 hours of which I felt every last minute, my plane descended into the clouds over San Francisco Bay.

Unfortunately there was some sort of freak typhoon called a ‘bomb cyclone’ thrashing the area when we came into land – no idea – but it had mostly passed the Bay by the time we arrived. SF Airport has one of those horrible airport runways that leads out to open water, which is fine for taking off but when you come into land makes it look like you’re just slowly descended into the choppy sea, only for tarmac to swing into view at the last second. We touched down, I was happy, my lips were black (wine).

*****

The passport guy asked me lots of questions about my intentions in the USA. He wasn’t unfriendly, but I was intimidated anyway because, I don’t know, I always worry I’ll give the wrong answer and a siren will go off and I’ll be tackled and head-bagged and frogmarched into a waiting truck or something. And then I’ll be thrown into a foreign jail like Bridget Jones, but instead of donning my bra and teaching everyone to sing, I’ll just… well I’ll just get an absolute seeing-to.

And then I got my stamp and I thought: whoa. I’m here. I did it – I’m actually fucking here. And I came through the big dramatic airport arrival doors ,which always gives me a rush even when there’s nobody there to meet me – except there was someone there to meet me, and it was my dear friend, my black-clad, freckle-faced, David-Lynch-haired best bud, Annie.

I don’t remember what her first words to me were, but if I had to put money on I’d wager either ‘Eyyy boys!’ or ‘Sup’. I’m not sure what mine were either, but I imagine they were something along the lines of ‘And now, my lad, our adventure begins’.

Just kidding. I probably just said ‘hello’.