Needs Unsaid, Needs Unmet

Keeping calm is hard. Carrying on is harder.

A frail morning light seeps through the curtains at Hotel Koldingfjord, crumbs of a well-deserved breakfast between the common beech ensconcing us from Denmark’s late November chill. Muyi stands at the mirror, adjusting her lanyard and smoothing away the evidence of her suitcase’s negligence from the lapels of her blazer. I watch her from the bed, blinking away my sleep, wondering how I’ll fill the day alone while she, The Gray Lady’s royal emissary, enraptures a conference of European journalists with tales of terminal America’s final institution.

I envision tagging along on this trip as a gentle floating in and beside Muyi’s orbit—steady, self-contained, my needs tidily shelved. I tell myself it will be enough to explore the periphery of this town. Maybe a quick brunch then a jog on the shore of the fjord—an amateur cosplay of the Scandi chic local I spotted in the train station when we arrived. Surely there’s dignity in being the companion who doesn’t fuss or lean. Just me, the landscape, and the glacial pace of a solo day.

But as she makes a final scroll through her schedule, I feel my insides twist with something unspoken. I want to ask for a suggestion, a plan, some way to tether myself to her day before she disappears confidently into it without me. I hesitate, caught between my self-image—this version of me that should be able to navigate on my own—and the shameful truth. She shuffles over, presses a quick kiss into my forehead, tells me she’ll see me later, and then she’s gone.

The door clicks shut and the twist becomes a knot. Frustration simmers. I am waiting for her to instinctively know what I can’t bring myself to say, hoping for a bridge to appear where none has been built. On my way to the bathroom I rehearse how I might have asked for help. Could we maybe have lunch together, alone? What would you do if you were me? It feels so quaint and absurd. I am asking for instructions on how to breathe.

A familiar dissociation settles in, the kind that numbs the sensory manifestations of panic. Feeling and thinking begin a game of musical chairs, and I fail to remind myself that my difficulty expressing a need has less to do with anyone else and everything to do with me. Expressing discomfort feels like admitting a fatal flaw, an irreparable crack in the mask of who I try so hard to be. If I can’t acknowledge that to myself, how could I possibly articulate it to Muyi? How could I expect her to adjust for something I haven’t even named?

By mid-morning, I’ve dressed, wandered downstairs and stretched a bit in preparation for my run. Inevitably, the day begins to unfold exactly how I feared: The fjord trail is hillier than expected, the air colder, and the scenic jog I’d imagined is replaced by pace-quickening irritation—where am I supposed to go, exactly? My fantasy collapses at a busy highway crossing, where I experience a heart palpitation and quickly accept that there are worse places to perish than suburban Denmark. I do not notice my new 5k personal best.¹

Making my way back to the hotel to sit in on a presentation Muyi’s giving, frustration has boiled into something closer to anger. As expected, she does great. Wows the crowd. People line up to praise her. When it’s finally my turn to say hello, my tone doesn’t match my admiration. It’s clipped, defensive, the mark of a poor communicator’s impossible expectations. Why didn’t you notice what I refused to let you see? I have, reprehensibly, blamed her for my problem.

When you spend your life but perfecting the art of convincing yourself and the people around you that you’re fine, small cracks in your mask metastasize into catastrophic failures. New experiences amplify this in ways I never fully anticipate. Being divorced from the familiar, stripped of the scaffolding I rely on—routines, comforts, the safety of predictability—makes this harder to ignore but also much more consequential to admit.

Muyi moves through these moments with the kind of clarity I envy. She says what she wants and needs with casual confidence: “I don’t like flying, can we drive instead?” “I need to make time to call my mom.” “Let’s hike the trail with the waterfall.” It’s not that she doesn’t struggle, but I sense that she doesn’t attach shame to it. Her needs don’t threaten her self-image—they’re simply facts. Watching her name them so easily makes me feel ashamed of how deeply I’ve tangled my own in guilt.

That evening, I sit on the lawn and dwell on the gap between who I am and who I want to be—on how much energy goes into maintaining my masks. I think about Muyi’s ways and digest the weight I place on each moment of asking. Of course, she handles my insecurity with patience and grace. So why must I selfishly turn every instance into a referendum on my independence, my competence?

I don’t have an answer, other than a banal sense that the whole puzzle doesn’t get solved in one try. Travel, I think, forces this reckoning in ways everyday life doesn’t. Mixing up the structures that keep everything intact is an uncomfortable opportunity. Out here, in these frictious moments with the people we love, trust and admire most, we’re offered a chance to complete the terrifying but necessary task of responding to our failures. It’s messy. It’s also honest. And that feels like a step toward something better.

Onward,

Miles

1. In “Slowness,” Kundera says something about modernity that I think is rather apt:

“Speed is the form of ecstasy the technical revolution has bestowed on man. As opposed to a motorcyclist, the runner is always present in his body, forever required to think about his blisters, his exhaustion; when he runs he feels his weight, his age, more conscious than ever of himself and of his time of life. This all changes when man delegates the faculty of speed to a machine: from then on, his own body is outside the process, and he gives over to a speed that is noncorporeal, nonmaterial, pure speed, speed itself, ecstasy speed.”