I stared at the escalator I was about to ascend up to the airport security line. It was finally happening.
My family and best friend had brought me to the airport, and I was saying my goodbyes. My mother had stayed home to look after my grandmother, so we had already had our teary-eyed parting.
After all this lead-up, after selling most of my things, after being apart from my husband for 6 months, I was finally actually on my way into the sky with all of my possessions packed into two suitcases and a guitar case. It felt like I was having an out of body experience; bearing witness to it all from the top of the escalator.
I don’t think there was any book or guide or podcast that could have prepared me for what I was about to experience from there, but I felt weirdly prepared to have no idea what I was doing. After all, I’ve been practicing my entire life.
“I’m not crying.”
Best friend: “Neither am I.”
“Nope, you’re definitely not crying. Just sweating profusely. From your eyes.”
She laughed and then sweat more.
I turned to my 80-year-old Grampa, who raised me, and he was eye-sweating too. So was my aunt. I had to get the fuck out of there fast or I was going to start second guessing all of it. So I ripped off the bandaid and climbed onto the escalator as quickly as my bulky guitar case and carry on would allow. I waved goodbye for an awkwardly long period of time as I slowly rose up to the next floor, and I refused to take my eyes off of my Grampa until I couldn’t see him anymore. Everyone present also meant the world to me, but he had the title of best pal long before anyone else, and it felt like I was walking away from a quarter of a century of that.
Eventually, the sea of people taking off their shoes and removing their watches swallowed me up and then poof – my family and friend weren’t with me anymore. Instead, I was surrounded by strangers who were all very much so in a rush to be somewhere that they weren’t. And a part of me was terrified that I was doing the same.
I spent the next few hours posting to social media. Have no illusions, yes I had my concerns, but I was going through a whole range of emotions that definitely included fucking psyched. I was tingling all over with anticipation, and I had to share all of this with the rest of the world because I couldn’t bear to hold it all on my own. This included a photo of my backpack that I posted because I had realised it had a very funny nervous face formed by its pockets and latches. I had a slight concern that people might catch on that this expression was a reflection of how I was partly feeling so I created a quick distraction by challenging the internet to name him/her in the caption. The clear winner was Frodo Baggins, although I now felt as though I was carrying a very concerned Elijah Wood hobbit around with me on my journey, which seemed weirdly appropriate.
I got on the flight and remembered hearing this podcast episode about people having a greater tendency to cry at high altitudes. I decided that if I did break down crying at any point I could entirely attribute it to this unexplained phenomenon and it would probably make more sense than crying over moving to another country that I very much liked to be with the person I loved. This narrative, unfortunately, was not something I could quickly explain to a seatmate who in all probability had not heard this obscure episode of some podcast, so I accepted the narrative was more for my own comfort than anything.
Thankfully on this first connecting flight, I was seated next to a lady from a town not far from me who kept me distracted. We then proceeded to have an interesting conversation about a locally well-known story that was somewhat controversial in its time which has stuck with me to this day. It involved psychology professor in her town who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. She had decided that she wanted to die on her own terms and with all of her faculties, so she told her family “In two years, I’m ending it.” Then, two years would pass, and she still had her wits about her so she would say again “I’m still ok, so I’ll give it two more years, then I’m ending it.”
This happened over the course of five years until finally, she began to forget things. At first, it was small things but she began to deteriorate rapidly, and she knew she had to act soon while she still could. So she ordered the appropriate combination of pills to mix with alcohol off of the internet and got her family together. They had a living wake of sorts, where they all got together to watch Mary Poppins and reminisce about the good times. Then, when she was ready, she went into the bedroom and took the pills. Her husband laid down with her until she left.
This story not only contributed even more to the wide range of emotions I was cycling through, but it also struck a familiar chord of solidarity; the kind where someone who wasn’t present was trying to show me something about myself. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Was it because I had just left behind my Gramma who had dementia? Sure, that was what sparked the conversation, but that wasn’t it. And I certainly didn’t feel my situation was of nearly the same degree of importance as this woman’s tragic diagnosis of dementia, but something about it all just kept resonating long after I began to run to my next flight.
It wasn’t until I had made it through the entirety of the O’Hare Airport in record time to board my next flight and was a sweaty panting pile in Economy Class that it hit me. I was out of breath and light headed, thinking “Is this whole experience really worth all the cardio”, and I looked down at my precious cheap little wedding ring. I thought of the moment I had decided to marry my husband – and then it clicked. The thing I was relating to with this courageous woman was that she and I both had something that occurred in our lives that could have easily turned into tragedies of which we were victims. There were all sorts of reasons to avoid accepting these realities we had been dealt and deny them until it was too late to do something about it, but instead of resisting them, we accepted them. And by doing so, we had the ability and time to experience them on our own terms. In my case, currently very sweaty terms.
This comparison may seem like I’m saying my marriage was a tragedy, so may make a little more sense with some background to catch you up. I had previously been through a lengthy tumultuous long-distance relationship with someone in England before meeting my husband, and it did not work out. So the first time I mentioned to anyone that Luke and I started talking on Skype, the reaction was not positive. It was a polite version of “you’re seriously doing that shit again?”
Even I was convinced when we first started talking that we were bound for failure and heartbreak and we weren’t even an item yet. But then he arrived to visit me in America and we had hit it off. And instead of dating long distance and hemming and hawing about what to do, we both committed to making the best of this torturous situation of living countries apart and in love; we decided to get married and give our relationship the chance it deserved.
Please let me clarify – I appreciate that our options were far more ideal than someone choosing what kind of death they got to have, but my point is that this woman was dealt a difficult hand and she accepted it gracefully and fucking owned it as best she could. At that moment I realised for the first time that I had actually been facing a less than ideal scenario that was masked as being a wonderful thing by all of the romance movies and crap we see on tv, but I knew deep down what it really was; opening myself up again to failure and quite possibly, heartbreak. Yet upon learning all this I hadn’t once fought it or ignored it until I had to face it, but instead accepted this reality and its limitations. Like her, I had opened myself up to the fact that this was happening, and that is what gave me the chance to craft it into an experience built on my own terms.
God, even at the time that felt like the connection had been made through some mental gymnastics as a result of the roller coaster of emotions I was on, but it was as clear as day to me. I felt like I quite suddenly realised my guts were made of leather, steel, and grace. This woman I’d never met helped me recognise something in myself and in my situation that I had failed to see before and I couldn’t even thank her for it. But sometimes this happens. We magically learn things about ourselves when we peer into the lives of others.
This would have been a fantastic moment to reference the phenomenon of people being more susceptible to tears when flying, but instead of explaining myself to my new seat mate I simply sat through the moment and I felt it as fully as I could. I observed it. And it was then that I realised I was not all of the feelings I was feeling – I was not someone who would abandon my family, I was not someone who was running away from my hometown. Sure, these were all feelings I was feeling but they weren’t who I was. They were simply what I was going through as a result of a combination of things that had happened in my life. And finally, with this thought, I drifted off to sleep (if you can really call in flight sleep, sleep).
You can stop reading this entry here if you like. The rest is simply for the romantic movie ending, which was not in fact an ending at all, but a beginning. (And if you would like to read more about the courageous lady I was speaking of you can do so here).
I entered through the arrival gate recording it all on my phone camera to find Luke waiting with my new father in law holding a sign that said “Are you embarrassed yet?” It was an ode to the first sign I had made for him. I was so moved that I lost hold of my luggage on the trolly, and in an attempt to catch it from falling I threw my phone, my luggage fell anyway, and I dropped everything all over the airport floor. I then assured my husband that I was simply managing his expectations as this was his life now, congratulations.
And that is how I entered life in the UK.
Why I'm Probably Right 