Airports have always fascinated me. Although traveling and airports always give me a certain degree of anxiety, I also love that butterfly-in-your-stomach, anticipatory feeling you get as you walk through the terminal, (usually) excited to get where you're going or to return home after being away. After getting through the high stress of security, I can finally take a deep breath and either look forward to where I'm going or reflect on where I've been. I've mostly flown by myself and I used to hate it, but I'm slowly growing to love it. Sitting in the airport tonight, waiting for my flight, I did something out of my norm. My typical routine at the airport usually entails getting some water, hitting a bathroom, and then getting to my gate obnoxiously early (to combat that aforementioned anxiety). Sitting at my gate, I usually kill time on phone, watch whatever game is on the airport TVs, or read. I often find myself distracted by all the hustle and bustle of the people streaming past me. I look up frequently from what I'm doing to take in my surroundings motivated by a mixture of curiosity and a titch of paranoia. Usually after looking around, I refocus and go back to what I'm doing. However, tonight, was different. Tonight, I sat back and watched. I watched people walk and run by, their rolling suitcases or small children in tow. I watched parents trying to corral their screaming, tired children. Adolescents having fun on the moving walkways. Twenty-somethings with their faces buried in their phones. People looking confused and searching for signs and people running to catch a flight with panicked looks on their faces. Couples holding hands, catching each others’ eyes frequently and smiling. Teams with matching apparel and bags, earbuds hanging from their ears. Elderly people graciously thanking the airport personnel who are pushing their wheelchairs to their gates. Dog owners coaxing their leashed dog to follow them through the chaos, and people just strolling by, seemingly in no hurry to get where they're going. I noticed everyone was focused on the task at hand, yet knowing that no one's mission was quite the same as the next.
As I watched each person walk by, I began to imagine their stories. Everyone has one, right? I wondered which people were excited and which ones were dreading landing at their destinations. I watched people who looked hopeful and excited, and imagined them departing on dream vacations, honeymoons, or reuniting with loved ones after a long time apart. I watched men and women in business apparel who looked stressed and fatigued, weary and ready to go sleep in their own bed, under the same roof as their family for the first time in weeks or months. I observed people with their sad eyes, wondering if they were sad to leave or sad to be returning. I saw people who seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if they wanted to make time go slower or prolong the reality of where they're traveling. As I observed all of these human beings moving past me, I looked hard at each face and looked for clues to what their life could be like. Watching and imagining all the people's stories triggered a memory of the last times I walked through an airport. I began to wonder what story someone may have assigned to me as I walked through the Phoenix airport last October, dragging my feet, walking so slow both on purpose and because I had no energy, foggily looking at signs, relishing my last moments of "freedom" before being scooped up by the Meadows driver and taken to what I first thought of as prison. Up until that moment, I had been blessed to associate airports as joy, gateways to vacations and visits to family and to happy places. Yet, last October as I sat on a plane unsuccessfully trying to skirt my seatmate's questions about where I was going and why, I remembered that airports aren't always joyful places. The friendly, concerned questions my relentless seatmate kept asking in response to my silence ("Wait, you're not flying to meet a stranger you met on a dating site right? Please tell me you're not doing that...") felt complicated and uncomfortable. For the first time, I was not excited about sharing my destination.
Airports can take you to happy places, but as I learned, that’s not always the case. Airports can take you away from people that you love for long amounts of time. They can put you on planes to places that you're not excited, or even dreading going to. They can be the last place you see a loved one for days, weeks, or months. Airports, as much as they see happy tears, running into the arms of a loved one, and homecomings, also see so much pain and sadness.
If you think about it, there is no other type of place on Earth that is quite like an airport. They can serve as a gateway to your past, or to your future. You can step onto a plane and walk out into a whole other state, country, or climate. An airport can take you one step closer to a dream, or happiness. Or it can take you to face harsh realities, loss, and distance. However, for me, one of the most beautiful things about airports is the complete transformations you can undergo from when you step foot out of one to the time you step foot back into one again. As I reflected on all of this and watched closely as all the people hurried by me, I said a quick prayer of thanks. Thanking God that this time in the airport was different than the last. Thankful that I was returning from my happy place and that my heart was full of joy and love instead of dread and shame and anxiety. I took a moment to be grateful that my destination fed my heart and soul in a different way than it did when my plane touched down in Phoenix, and that my body was healthier and more whole than it had been when I departed Des Moines in October. One thing I know for sure, the stories someone would be making up if they saw me walking through Detroit are far from the ones they would have been making up about me as I walked through Phoenix. As I fly home to Iowa in this dark plane, I’m (again) realizing that I’m incredibly lucky. My "worst" destination, as bad as it felt in the moment, healed me in ways I didn't know were possible. I'm fortunate that I've been able to board many planes and be excited about my destinations. I'm grateful that I have mostly been able to experience the happy, excited sides of airports, and not the painful, sad sides. Watching all those people walk by my gate tonight and imagining their stories, was a good reminder of just how blessed I am in this life. So next time you're in an airport, I encourage you to pause and take in the chaos surrounding you. Take in the many emotions written across the faces of your fellow human beings and let yourself connect with the stories that you imagine for each of them. If you take the time, it truly is amazing the things that you can see if you just sit back, be still, and open your heart to all the beautiful humans and stories around you.
Your thoughts certainly resonated with me. I have traveled by myself a few times and was quite content to read to bury myself in a book or at least pretend to be. It is fascination and insightful to really observe those coming and going in an airport and imagine what are their stories. Your writing connects with folks in many ways.