The Flight

It was the flight that changed my life and my whole way of of thinking.


I generally hold myself together well. I can make it through some of the worst situations that would cripple most people into tears with nothing but shorter nails and higher blood pressure to show for it. I pride myself on my emotional resolve, but all of this changed this summer in one critical plane flight.

I made it two steps through security before I began to heave incredibly pathetic sobs of dispair, every bone in my body trying to turn me around to go back. My heavy legs boarded the plane ever so unwillingly and I sat, sobbing, in my seat, luckily spared of any company. Looking out the window and the runway lights, suddenly my heart ached so fiercly i thought I might die. The plane began to move and with every rotation of its unforgiving tires my heart constricted and my lungs denied me the air necessary for me to scream out like my mind was encouraging, but my mouth was dry and my joints were locked in place.

I felt like I was trapped, slowly dying and no one could see that I just wanted to get off the plane. After a short pause from the string of text messages he and I were sending and with another frantic look out the window as the plane began to pick up speed, I typed those three unforgiving, unrestrained words ... I love you ... into my pay-as-you-go phone and pressed send just as the plane began to lift off the ground. Overcome I sobbed into my seat, watching as I left this new world behind...along with my heart and all that went with it. I turned off my phone and stared, in pieces, out at the haunting image of Qatar fading into the distance.


I was going home.


Rebecca