Growing Pains (pt. 2)
It’s always foggy, it seems, when I arrive at the airport— dark, misty, and full of possibility. Airports hold a special place in my heart. They’re charged with emotion, and, inevitably, a sense of brevity. Airports house many endings and beginnings. You’re going somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit, perhaps starting fresh in a new city. You’re saying tearful goodbyes to family members, moments before going through the dreaded TSA line. You’re running toward a dream, or from a fear, or just simply running, moving forward to whatever is next. Airports, really, mark some sort of in-between for everyone there, a brief moment in time nestled against two certains.
It was 8 PM when I exited the car and entered that intermediary. My sweatshirt and my purse were the only belongings I deemed worthy of accompanying me here, to this moment. It was the first time I had been to an airport alone. It was the first time in my life, really, where I had felt alone. Companionship and closeness have always been something I prioritized, and yet, after a tumultuous few weeks, I came to find myself, solitary, at the entrance of Terminal 2.
I had it in my head that I might catch a last-minute flight to London. I hadn’t told anyone, nor did I intend to, really. The reason I had found myself standing there wasn’t a thought-out ideal, or something I was serious about. I knew, deep down, that I was not there for a flight. I was there for closure, clarity, or something close to it. I wanted desperately to stand face-to-face with the in-between that my life had become. I wanted a solid ending on this chapter of my life, or a beginning to a new one; to say a tearful goodbye to everything I felt I had lost in the past few weeks, to run from this new uncertainty. I knew, deep down, that escaping to London would not change my in-between. I’d still feel alone and my life would still lay undone.
In those weeks prior, every piece of me found itself out of place— I couldn’t mediate the moving pieces or make sense of each change. My life and its changes rested so heavy on my chest. For the first time in a long while, I had no idea where I was going: what the next day held, the next month, the next year. I had (and still have) no clue what I wanted to study, no clue what my goals were, no clue where, in the end, I was going. I came to the airport, I realized, hoping for an end— an end goal, or at the very least, an end to this interlude.
Nothing, not even an escapist flight, could provide that end but time itself. Moving ever-forward, whether I liked it or not, seemed to be the only thing I could do. Standing there, I realized I would not get the bookend I wanted on this period of my life. No closure, clarity, or something close to it— just me, faced with a possibility that only time itself could deliver. The hardest part about parting, really, is never the parting itself. It’s the unravelling, and the slow process of pulling yourself back together. Until that end comes, I’ll be moving forward through the intermediary. I’ll learn, I’ll grow, and I’ll navigate that space in-between.
