Beyond Terror

I was thirteen the first time I got on a plane, much to the continued chagrin of many people in my life, due in no small part to the fact that I was alone. The trip was the culmination of the most important year of my public schooling. Ms. Fosher’s seventh grade English class was where I discovered I was a writer under her exasperated but fond direction. (Years later we would talk about it. “I thought you already knew you were a writer!” she would tell me. “No,” I would explain. “No, I leaned that from you.” and we would laugh as all the pieces suddenly fit together.) Because of Ms. Fosher I had applied to Stanford’s EPGY writing class, and to my own surprise I’d been accepted. That meant making my way out to California, literally the opposite end of the country, by myself. I was young enough to qualify for a program where a flight attendant would act as a babysitter and hold my hand from one gate to the next, but Dad figured I could probably figure out reading the signs myself. I’d more than proved I was literate. 

Dad was right about my being able to handle the practical aspects of the trip, to the relief of those who may have been less trusting. What I wasn’t at all prepared for was the way the change in pressure from the ground to the air would affect me. The descent on the way home, for some reason, was the absolute worst experience. My ears hurt badly enough to bring me to tears. I felt like I was dying, like my head was going to blow up and take the whole plane with it (and wouldn’t that have been a nice up yours to the TSA), and none of the tricks I had heard should make it hurt less helped in the slightest. Even when my dramatic thirteen-year-old brain genuinely believed this would be my end, I couldn’t bring myself to regret a moment of it. I knew that if I survived the experience, I’d be fool enough to get right back on a plane the next time an opportunity arose. I’d had a taste of the ultimate freedom, and I wasn’t going to give it back, even though my ears spent at least the next couple of days ringing. 

College turned out to be the next chance I would get. Through multiple study abroads and the odd misadventure in between, the ins and outs of air travel have become almost routine. I know just how to pop my ears now so the discomfort only lasts a moment, and it gets no chance to crescendo into the head splitting pain I still remember with a wince. I’d almost go as far as to say I’m more at ease with traveling alone than I am with anything else in my life, though that would probably be a slight exaggeration. Despite the objective dangers and nerve-wracking aspects, there’s something centering about making all the decisions and knowing you’ve taken your life completely into your own hands. 

This trip to Chicago is almost a return to the feeling of that first trip I took as a kid. It’s a responsibility of a different kind. Up until now, when I’ve traveled it’s been with the safety net of some sort of academic program, of something definite waiting for me on the other side. This time, I’ve got a room I’m renting and a job hunt ahead of me. I’ll have to budget for groceries and food and transportation, all perfectly normal considerations but not ones I’ve had to handle before. I feel almost as in the dark as I did when my dad and my stepmom waved at me from the other side of the security check eight years ago. 

Honestly, I’m kind of glad. Once I got past the raw terror that I tried to hide (probably terribly, but I was thirteen, and my parents were trusting me to do this all by myself and I couldn’t mess that up) I found an agency and a pride and a strength and a sense of self beyond anything I had ever imagined. I want to believe there’s something similar hiding behind the same feeling now.