“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Miriam Beard

tuesday, 2 july 2013, 7:15 am. We departed at dawn. Of course, I stayed up all night in order to arrive at the airport on time*. I always say that this strategy helps me to sleep on the flight, but really it’s nerves.

spring break, 1999. As I boarded my first flight ever, I saw my nerves as the natural impulse preceding the land mammal’s unnatural ability to fly. My overactive imagination conjures a movie idea about the worst-case scenarios of a teenager who escapes her fate to perish in a fatal plane crash only to find her fate chasing her literally to death. I shudder at the thought and thank filmmakers for not realizing such a terrifying notion**. While it was the (obvious and very rational) fear of plummeting to the earth that awakened in me during takeoff, my concerns turn to my sinuses and the ear-splitting headache overwhelming my high-altitude existence. The next time I fly, I predict my nerves will purely be the psychological symptom to an inevitable in-flight earache.

thursday, 20 june 2013. A friend asked me why I had already made up my mind not to sleep prior to our flight to Greece. I think about it and answer that it’s just nerves. Nerves that I might forget an essential item or run out of money during my trip. The usual. I fall asleep wondering how honest I am being with myself.

tuesday, 2 july 2013, 8:30 am. Butterflies continue to inhabit my abdomen. After more than a week of reflection, I think of a more profound and acceptable justification of my nerves: fear of change. By this time, I have traveled abroad several times, so flying is nothing new. Rather, I’m afraid of not being the same me to whom my family and friends have bid farewell. I’m afraid that the old me will cease to exist as a result of uniquely challenging experiences. Sure, I’ll be there to perform with my choir, but travel invites and expects us to respond spontaneously. For an introvert like me, travel is the mama bird constantly urging her fledgling to spread her wings. (I know, it’s cheesy -- just go with it.) I can’t do it, I tell myself. She pushes further, attempting to convince me of my capacity to fly. By the end of my first full day of flight, I’ve forgotten how deeply scared I had been before discovering the gift, the talent. In fact, I’ve forgotten the perspective altogether, and there’s no going back. In other words, I’m nostalgic for yesterday’s me and anxious about the me in flux. Tomorrow will be wrought with other challenges, as always, and the new me will devise her own ways of managing them. Or let’s hope so, anyway.

*on time in Angela terms means I arrived with just enough time to not miss my flight.

** Final Destination was released one year later and henceforth polluted my imagination with infinitely more deadly possibilities.