Last month, I had to renew my passport. As part of the process, I was required to send in my existing passport, which still had a month left on it. Due to processing times and staggering incompetence on the part of the delivery company, I was without documentation for over two weeks.
The anxiety was excruciating. I had no plans to leave the country; there was no ostensible reason I would need travel documents for months. But knowing I couldn’t leave, knowing that my ability to jump on a plane or drive to the nearest port and catch a last-minute ferry was tied to a tiny leather booklet locked in a drawer somewhere I couldn’t access, made me panic.
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