Life

Some Thoughts I Had While Being Sad In An Airport

This is probably a blessing, feeling this way.

By

Some Thoughts I Had While Being Sad In An Airport
Dmitry Zvolskiy

1. I do not know what they pump through the vents in airports but without fail anytime I have to sit in one for any extended period of time (which is often, because I always think security will take 2 hours and it never does) I get very sad and very nostalgic. Someone should write a poetry book about sad girls in airports because omg, you would sell 10,000 copies. Anyway. So I’m sitting at a seafood restaurant at LAX and all I can think about is how excited I am to be home but how much I love the people in my life and it’s painful that those two things can’t simultaneously be in the same place. My friendships look like a map of someone bragging about where they’ve traveled to. New York, Minnesota, Virginia, Toronto, LA, Portland, Texas, Arizona, etc. More and more I think I would be exponentially happy living commune style so long as I was surrounded by my weird, wonderful friends. We could eat dinners family style ideally at an outdoor table and always be able to be around each other. This is probably a blessing, feeling this way. There is probably a famous quote said by like, Rumi or some shit about what a blessing it is to have friends that you miss like this. I am a lucky person to have people I treasure so much that not being able to be around them at a moment’s notice makes me moody at an airport eatery.

2. For a very very very very Very™ long time, I believed that feelings were not for me. That emotions were for ugly people, as Willam Belli once said. If I’m being truly honest, I think I thought they were synonymous with weakness. That a feeling was a crack in a foundation and too many of them would result in inevitable collapse. I believed if someone knew I cared about them, or that I was in pain, or that something made me happy, those were things that could then be turned against me in some way. I was the queen of bury it down. Squash it all the way down and bury it so deep that no one can touch it, no one can see it, no one can identify the cracks.

I’m trying to forgive myself for the cracks. I’m trying to remember that if there is strength in being able to move on from your breaks, there is also some strength in allowing yourself to break in the first place.

I am trying to be more open. Because the cracks, I think, are important. I am trying to soften myself. I am trying to be gentler and say what I mean and tell people the things that I feel. I used to think that by being stoic and this immovable force I would be the strongest, most unfuckwithable version of myself. But more and more I am learning there is a lot of bravery in being open. In saying, “This hurt me,” or, “I love this,” or, “I need this.” That level of vulnerability takes a lot boldness, a lot of bravery. And that different kind of strength is something I admire a lot and am training myself to be okay with.

3. This is not new information for most people, but I would love to write a book called The Life-Changing Magic Of Just Eating At Home. There’s something really wonderful about roasting broccoli and just eating it in a bowl at your house. It really does wonders, trust me.

4. This video is the best thing on the internet currently and I just have to share it.

I would pay a significant amount of money to be able to know what dogs think. What was she thinking?! What ran through her tiny mind before she jumped?! Ugh. One of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time, truly.

5. The logical side of my brain knows that everything ends. Nothing is permanent. All of us are just little organ sacks bumbling around and eventually, we or the planet or both will be gone. I know that one of these days we’ll all be dead so none of this matters, I do. I am not someone who feels like I need to be on some endless search for meaning or permanency. If no one remembers me in 100 years, well, that just means I was like most people and that’s fine.

But I have lately been obsessed with the notion of not going out wondering whether or not I could’ve done more. Whether or not I could’ve scritched my dog one more time. Walked her just a little bit longer. Let her run through the park just one more time. I’ve been thinking about how I don’t want us to always sleep with our backs to each other. We should hold each other just one more time. Let’s laugh one more time, make one more inside joke, say one more ridiculous thing that no one else would find funny. I’ve been mulling over how stupid it is to think, “ehh I’ll just give her space” when someone is hurting and how I’ll regret it if I could’ve reached out. One more, don’t let it be a last regret, more more more is playing on repeat in my head like a that P!nk CD that got stuck in my car in high school.

I was listening to a podcast last week and it said that all of our fears can be linked back to a fear of death. So a fear of heights is really a fear of falling, fear of water is a fear of drowning, fear of driving is a fear of crashing etc etc etc. I’ve never really thought that I was that afraid of death, and I still stand by that. But maybe this latest addition to the list of “things I obsess and overthink about” is related back to that. Maybe it’s less, “I am afraid of dying,” and more, “I am afraid of dying or losing someone or something and not having done enough.”

And I don’t know what the answer is to this. Just that I seem to be on an endless search for this unobtainable label of “enough” and there really doesn’t appear to be an end to it in sight. Well, other than the whole “someday I will die” ending. But hopefully when that comes this isn’t a search I’m still writing 1100 words about in an airport.