On Standing Outside The Airport And Wanting To Text You To Take Me With You

I’m riding the train to the airport, thinking about texting you to take me with you.

It feels like I’ve been traveling forever. First to the desert, then to the woods, then to New York where I laid on the floor of his apartment and said things like, “Do you ever wish that you could have hit pause on 2013, because I do and is that normal?” And now just after traveling again, I’m being dramatic on a train and giving myself an anxiety attack trying to decide what I need to say. Do I need to say anything? Maybe thinking I need to say something and not knowing what I should say is a sign I need to stop talking so much.

I’m standing inside the airport and I realize, I have no idea what I’m doing here. I don’t know what flight you’re on I don’t know what you’re thinking, I don’t know where your head space is at, I don’t know if everything that I’m feeling is completely one-sided. I just cried on a train, I don’t look good. I look like I’m having a breakdown and truthfully, I probably am.

So I just wander around the halls of SeaTac and do things like try to look inconspicuous and peruse the Hudson News. I try to decide how it can be legal for literally every coffee to market themselves as Seattle’s best. I wonder if I explained the situation, how I feel something for the first time since 2014, they’ll let me through TSA without a ticket. I wash my hands next to a woman with four Vera Bradley bags. She says welcome home when I pull out my train pass.

I’m standing outside of the airport, trying to justify being the kind of person who shows up at an airport in a dramatic fashion. Trying to decide if this lump in my chest is reason enough, some sort of sign I should listen to, or if I’m just sleep deprived. I wonder if maybe people would’ve felt differently about the Friends finale if Ross had gone to the airport instead of Rachel getting off the plane. I try to decide if I can honestly look at myself with any sort of self-respect anymore because being the person who shows up unexpectedly to say, “Hey like, maybe I still love you?” at an airport is the antithesis of who I am.

But the fact of the matter is, I’m standing outside of the airport, thinking all of these thoughts to no one other than myself, and I’m not texting you. I’m not saying, “Hey, I’m here.” I’m not asking you to do anything. And more importantly, you’re not asking if I showed up. Or even if I thought about it. Or even hinting remotely that that is something you would want me to do.

So I turn to the lady who has the absurd amount of Vera Bradley luggage and say, “Thanks, it’s good to be home.”

And now I’m on a train leaving the airport writing this in the Notes App on my phone and promising to myself that I’m never going to publish it anywhere where you might be able to find it.

But while being the person who dramatically shows up at an airport to say, “Hey, do you still love me? Because I think you might.” is so not me, eventually coming to terms with writing something about you and publishing it is a someone I can learn to live with.