Yet again, I find myself at another airport. A flight to take me away to somewhere else. I’ll fly in the sky, and then I’ll land and continue this life of mine. I sit here, 22 years old, about to start my final term at university. I can remember so clearly when I graduated high school, and the thought of graduating from university seemed impossibly far away. Four years? That was like an eternity. What would my life look like then? Where would I be? Who would I be? Well, it turns out I’m still the same little girl, but I’m also a woman who has been curated and carved out of the choices and turns I have made. Choice. What a beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing possibly? A choice. A simple word that now seems to hold the weight of the world.
During the winter break, I often walked down to the ocean and plunged into the icy cold saltwater, alone on an isolated beach where I’d been swimming my whole life. Sometimes, I managed to stay in for 5 minutes. Each step excruciatingly cold. The hardest part is sinking to my neck. Wanting to scream, and usually screaming. And then remembering to breathe. Deep. In. Out. In. Out. Through the nose, out the mouth. The water biting into my skin like tiny razor blades. I would look out. The deep, hunkered mountains laid out before me. They looked so peaceful, like the soft curves of a sleeping woman covered in a warm green blanket. My eyes would close. Numbness settled into my bones. Small, slow dance movements with my arms and legs. It was so quiet. But life was pulsating all around me. Or maybe it was just my blood. Life was loud, but my mind was quiet.
When I was 18, I wrote a personal essay, “Feeling lost as an 18-year-old”. Reading it back made me giggle at myself. So dramatic, Jeez! Maybe I’ll read this back in four years and laugh at myself too; a girl can hope! In the essay, I explained that I was sitting at the bottom of this massive teacup and didn’t know how to get to the top, like a scene from Alice in Wonderland. If I talk myself into thinking I haven’t changed since then, this metaphor clearly shows me I have. How sad that I felt like life was closed in by four walls, and the only way out was up. Now, I see life all around me. I see the choices I make every day as the life that will be splayed out before me when I die. It will never be about getting to the top. I’m glad I learned that if nothing else.
I put my ear against my mom’s chest on Christmas Eve. I heard her heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was a sound and feeling I knew would stay with me. It sounded so constant, so steady, but it terrified me at how fragile I knew it was. The morning I left, she came into my room early and lay under my green polka-dot blankets with me. “Sometimes I wish you never grew up.” She said, stroking my hair behind my ears. “It all happened so fast. Like I blinked, and it was over.” I hugged her two times before I left, wanting to hold her forever. To stay in this moment for eternity. Knowing that we were holding each other to keep from falling apart.
I hugged my dad at the airport and told him I loved him. He looked back at me with a small, sad smile, eyes the same colour as mine. I slowly walked to security, looking back at him every few seconds. Tears threatened to spill, and my throat was aching, trying to suppress them. I’ve said bye many times to many people in my life. But why does it never get easier? For me, it just gets more difficult. What type of crazy person leaves a home so comfortable and full of people who you love and who love you? But I reminded myself that it is in these hellos and goodbyes, however painful, that I have found the most profound sense of love and life and what it means to be a human being. Endings and beginnings are simultaneously beautiful and painful. The immensity of the love is intensified to a point where it feels like you are about to break. These moments demand us to feel so many things at once.
My dad disappeared around the corner. I wondered what he’d think about on the car ride home. I thought about him driving back in silence and resuming his life as if I’d never been there. A daughter who would now only ever be a visitor in his life, arriving home only to leave. Tears then started to escape. A young girl turned around in the security line and handed me a tissue; her eyes were red too.
Seven hours later I found myself back in the big city, sitting on my bed. The final season of the university chapter begins. I took an Uber from the airport and arrived late at my apartment. I looked out the car window and greeted a city that now held so much of who I had become. Before I knew it, I was getting emotional all over again.
My roommates were not home, and I found my first few minutes in the apartment surreal. I touched the walls as I walked around and quietly watered my dying plants in a state of subtle mental numbness. Perhaps it was because I was tired, or maybe our minds need time to catch up to our bodies when we suddenly travel long distances and experience strong emotions. My room, with its oatmeal-coloured walls and matching blankets, pictures and nooks I’ve collected in my young adult life. Plants scattered on bookshelves and sitting on desks, now greeted me just as the cedar trees and seagulls said bye to me.
I tried to go to sleep after showering. But the sounds of drunk laughter and jazz music from next door kept me awake. I had become used to falling asleep to the deep hush of rain in a sleeping forest. The duality of my little life was suddenly displayed before me. I felt like I could close my eyes and open them and be at home on the island or at home on College Street. Each blink would bring me to a new reality. My sense of where and who I was in the world blurred. I lay in bed with the covers pulled up to my chin and watched the patterns of the warm streetlights shimmer along the wall. My heart felt both full and heavy. I wanted to cry and laugh. How lucky was I to have different places in the world where love was held? I felt like I was about to explode with this feeling. I imagined myself shattering into hundreds of little parts. Each piece of me would fly like a feather and get carried in the wind to all the people and places I loved. I would float down, and they would catch me. I would materialize and stand beside them and laugh at how funny it all was. I wish I could be with all of them.
I finally began to feel the dream world beckoning me in. The saxophone caressed my hair, its notes resembling my mom’s fingerprints, and the drunk laughter softened and began to murmur a lullaby, a voice that sounded like my dad’s, calling me down for dinner. The patterns on my wall could also be from the glow of the moon, shining through my childhood window. My blankets pulled to my chin weren’t just oatmeal coloured; they were green and scattered with polka dots.
Oh, I thought to myself as I drifted off. How strange it all was. How lonely. How full.