When my plane touched down in Reykjavik, Iceland, I was both very much in love and very much alone. At the start of spring, I had fled the torture of my affection for the unavailable by purchasing a solo ticket to the geographical equivalent of the moon. I may as well have walked into a travel agency and asked, “Where can a 20-year-old woman go to forget herself?”

The moment I stepped onto the tarmac, a sharp, violent gust knocked the wind out of me. The air felt like it was swarming with hard rocks. Yet it was strangely purifying — as though the moment my feet touched the soil, I was somehow cleansed.

A bus took me to the center of the city, and my face warmed with awe at the white plank buildings with orange and cobalt roofs, the children bundled in two or three lopapeysa each (though it was April), the strange colorless sky that made everything feel like you were sleepwalking.

The city was overwhelming, and yet it could hold the entirety of the place in the palm of my hand. I found my lodgings in minutes, despite my sole guidance being an abbreviated map in the back of a tattered guidebook. My hostel was located in an old biscuit factory. An all-female jazz trio was performing in the lobby when I arrived. I settled into the snug quarters, took a soapless shower, and returned to the common area so I could crack into Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood — an attempt at romantic detox.