For an hour this morning, I couldn’t find my passport.

I tore through everything. Every cushion, every pocket, every one of the four bags I brought. I lifted up anything that had a bottom: books, jackets, cup coasters, even a bowl that clearly couldn’t hold a damn passport but got searched anyway. Nothing. Gone.

It’s a strange kind of panic when something small holds nearly your entire sense of freedom. My flight was only domestic, nothing major, but I carry my passport everywhere because I never really know when I’ll need to go. Or want to. Most days, the U.S. feels too tight, too loud, too violent, too much, and a flight out feels like the only thing that could make me breathe again. That little blue book is my escape hatch.

When panic sets in, I go quiet. There’s this internal storm that floods everything. My body gets loud, my brain goes underwater. My friend was there helping me look, and I couldn’t really talk until my brain started to climb out from that panic. When it did, I just looked at her and said, “I feel stuck.”

And that was the truest thing I could’ve said.

The word came out like it had been waiting years to speak again. Stuck. I hadn’t felt that since March 2020. The last time I knew—really knew—I couldn’t go anywhere. Back then, we were all trapped in our own corners of the world, watching flights disappear and borders shut down. I remember how quiet the skies got. I remember thinking, I’ll never take movement for granted again.

But standing there this morning, surrounded by half-unpacked bags and the smell of Ethiopian food on my hoodie from the night before, I felt that same closing-in sensation. The walls around me seemed to shift a little closer. The air got heavy. I felt loss. Not just of a document, but of possibility.

It’s wild how much meaning can live inside one object. This is my third passport and it has stamps, sure, but it also has stories. It’s two pages away from full. It’s proof that I can leave if I need to. That I can go sit somewhere oceans away and eat soup on cool afternoons with strangers, or get lost down a sketchy alley that doesn’t know my name. It’s proof that I’m still allowed to change my scenery, my mind, my life whenever I damn well please.

Losing it, even temporarily, felt like being told no.

And I hate being told no.

My mind started running through logistics: how to get a same-day passport while traveling, replacing the visas inside, what time the office opens, how far it was from where I stood. Every thought made my chest tighter. The absurdity of having to earn my way back to freedom while already carrying all this proof of being alive stung.

And underneath it all was grief. Not just over the passport, but over how fragile freedom really is. How one lost document, one border policy, one global event can flip your entire sense of autonomy. I remembered those early pandemic days, when “travel restrictions” became this phrase that meant stay put, stay scared, stay small. And I’d promised myself I’d never feel that again.

But there it was.

That creeping, choking feeling of being grounded against your will.

For a minute, I sat on the edge of the bed and let the panic soften into something else. Gratitude, maybe, or surrender. The kind that comes when you realize control was never really yours in the first place.

Then I went back to searching. Not frantically this time, but with some kind of strange calm.

And there it was in the car, wedged between the seat adjustment wheel and the door. I laughed. A shaky, exhausted laugh, the kind that comes from being terrified and relieved in the same breath.

Holding it again, I ran my fingers over the cover, that familiar navy blue with its gold seal, and I swear it felt heavier than before. Like it knew what it carried.

The ability to move, to leave, to start over, to not explain yourself.

I know it’s just a book of paper and ink, but damn if it doesn’t represent something holy. Not in the religious sense. Just in the sacred way something can hold both your past and your possibility at once.

For an hour this morning, I thought I’d lost that.

And for that hour, I remembered what it feels like to be trapped.

To not know when you’ll next see the ocean. To feel your body wanting to run but your circumstances saying, not today.

I never want to feel that loss again. But maybe I needed the reminder.