I’m scared of planes. Even though, yes, flying is statistically safer than driving, and yes, I get in my friend Vanessa’s car every week and watch as she goes 110 on the freeway and screams out the window: flying still scares me.
But I like the way Vanessa drives, even if it scares some of our other friends and even me. It reminds me of the first time I tried to kill myself — and failed, of course. It reminds me of the simple fact that once you get over that initial fear of dying the rest comes easily. Dying doesn’t feel like dying once you’ve already done it before.
What I would give to be in Vanessa’s car right now instead of on this plane, but I’m here anyways. The child next to me has counted to twenty, and then thirty, and then incessantly bothered his mother for a new number to count to, and still the plane has not taken off.
I begin to worry about mechanical issues, engine failure, weather delay. I imagine the possibility of a bolt coming loose mid-flight, me plummeting in my seat over one of those corn states, the window seat kid whining for mommy mommy mommy the whole way down. I don’t think it’d be so bad, as far as dying goes. I’d hopefully get to text some people goodbye before I’d feel my stomach drop with the rest of the plane. I imagine all of those people receiving my texts and frantically trying to call me, text me, ask me if it’s true. It’s selfish but that’s the suicide ideology. Imagining yourself dead, and everyone mourning your loss, wishing they could’ve done better. Death has assumed the status of fame for me.
Eventually we begin to take off, and I mutter to myself that 90 percent of crashes occur during takeoff or landing. It doesn’t feel that conciliatory in the moment, but once we’re in the air things get better.
The kid next to me starts watching a movie without headphones in. I’m unsure whether I should pity his fate of being glued to an iPad for the rest of his childhood or be annoyed. Instead I’ve turned him into a character in this story.
Above the horizon the sun seems to set backwards, the rainbow glow fading upwards into a light blue sky. I like to imagine the plane racing against the spinning of the earth as we head westward. The earth always wins of course; it will have been dark for hours by the time we reach our destination. But what if? What if planes had the power to turn back time? Where would I fly to then?
Last night you held me in your arms as I cried. I couldn’t tell if you thought that the wetness on your chest was just my hair dripping or the tears. Eventually you asked me do you think you should maybe blow your nose? and it was the tenderest thing anyone has ever said to me. You told me things would be okay but I couldn’t speak through my tears to say that I wasn’t worried about things never being okay, rather worried that things would never be this type of okay again. We would never be able to live this moment, this year, ever again. I wanted to live the past week over and over again, fight and all, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with the moment it would all change. I wanted to whisper to you I will never be this girl again but instead I just restarted crying when you told me I’m so glad I found you. As if I was something to be discovered, but really, it did feel like you discovered me.
When we said goodbye just this morning you told me the same thing. I cried again into your shoulder and we said I love you at the same time. When I got in the car to drive away I was scared to look at your face, afraid of what I would find. The one glimpse I got was of your blank stare. I don’t know what it meant but I don’t try to read you anymore. Sometimes I ask you what you’re thinking about but most of the time I just watch you, wondering silently.
We’re higher up in the sky now and I could watch a movie to drown out the sound of the kid but I don’t. When I texted you sorry for crying you texted me back thank you for being sad. It felt weird, being thanked for my sadness, a weight I’ve grown to feel has no redeeming qualities. When earlier in the year I just couldn’t stop crying for weeks on end all I told you was that I was feeling sad. You asked is it math class? and I laughed through the tears at how pure you were. I couldn’t explain it and I didn’t try to. I let you hold me and kiss the tears away and that was enough.
For years of my life, for what feels like forever, I have been weighted by this sadness. For years of my life I have equated my sadness with my own supposed unlovability. I get it. It’s difficult to try to fix something and not succeed. Eventually I gave up trying to be fixed and trying to be loved and had sex with the first person who would tell me that I was beautiful.
The funny thing about the concept of a first love is that it renders all the love you’ve had before it obsolete. If you never have a first love then you are incapable of being loved. No matter your parents, no matter your friends. Let’s call it the first love paradox. The awful thing is that some people wait their whole lives waiting to be loved for the first time.
I hate soppy cliches so I won’t say everything changed when I found you. The man behind me on the plane is snoring and I’m thinking of how you’re a peaceful sleeper. I used to hate sleeping with other people because I always felt crowded, suffocated. Now when we sleep together I lay down on your chest and crawl back into your arms in the morning.
The sunset is catching up with us now and the clouds seem to be expanding to greet us. The kid next to me is eating some spicy chip or other and I think I’ve decided to make peace with his presence. He loves planes and his mom loves him and while they might be glued to the screen (that is playing a movie out loud) it feels okay to let other people experience love.
If we ever get the power to fly back in time I’d go back to the first day I met you and relive this past year over again. It’s the first year of my life I would want to live again. It’s not to say that I don’t want to move forward. It’s just to say that I want to remember what it felt like to be loved, sadness and all.
this is going nowhere 