Arrivals

I ran away to Wilmington with a last minute plane ticket and a strong desire to escape. I took an early morning plane from Laguardia to Myrtle beach international airport wearing aleather jacket, jeans, and boots, all in black, and I stepped into a world of color and sunlight. My sister was picking me up, and was still about an hour away from the airport when I arrived and so I sat in the air-conditioned lobby until I thought she was close...and then I stepped outside..and never have I felt such a sense of rebirth as I did when that first wave of warm air blew across my face. My layers began coming off: physical and emotional. I felt like I had left a world of darkness and cold for a paradise of warm weather and freedom. And I was at the airport! there was construction across the street! there was a man with his belly hanging out of his shirt and a cigar sitting on the bench next to me! and it was bliss! I came to the realization at that moment that I wasn't cut out to live in New York forever. I had fought for it, I had convinced everyone, even myself, that those are my kind of people, thats my kind of place! I'm too sarcastic, too original, too liberal to NOT be in New York. And you know...I was wrong. And sitting outside the airport next to the man with the cigar and the gut I finally let myself just be myself and be okay with it. And ironically, I truly felt, and still feel, like I have arrived.