37 Hours to Introspection

Around 11:30PM, hours later than my anticipated arrival into Atlanta, I sat down with the only remaining food available in the terminal’s  food court; old, dried fried chicken and a $12 yogurt parfait, a lukewarm coke zero to wash it all down. I took my first bite and to my surprise, I was actually comforted. All the salt and oils of the chicken felt like the America I left behind a week ago when I left for Costa Rica. The pure fattiness, the absolute disaster this was going to cause my stomach felt like home in the way the rice and beans and baked plantains (all of which settled nicely into my stomach, not a gas bubble to speak of after digestion…a little suspicious, honestly) had not. I was finally home. Or, almost home. I only had one 2.5 hour flight standing in the way of me and Boston, the land of cigarettes and Dunkin Donuts, a place so familiar, flying back into Logan after a vacation was like putting on a warm sweatshirt right out the dryer. 

Much to my dismay, I was not by myself eating this fried chicken and day old yogurt parfait. I was with my friend. After five days of hanging out non-stop, I was disgustingly ready to not be around him anymore. Part of this stems from the fact I cherish my alone time. To not have to be anything or say anything, but simply exist, is a relief I look forward to each day. A relief that, while on vacation, only came in the form of taking a shower or going to the bathroom. I’d stretch each bathroom activity like I was a man at home, escaping his responsibilities by claiming it takes 45 minutes to take a dump. I’d sit on the toilet, pants up, and breathe the relaxed breath of someone by themselves, almost dreading the moment I’d inevitably have to leave the bathroom and hang out with my friends in a beautiful, tropical foreign country. A fate worse than death. 

But a large part of my wish to have checked Charlie in my suitcase and only tracked his whereabouts via the “where is my bag?” feature in my Delta App was, to put it bluntly; I was annoyed with him. He had somehow travelled back in time on this trip, emerging as the 16-year old boy I had first befriended nearly 20 years ago, rather than a 35-year-old man he had grown to be. I had spouts of deja-vu during our trip, remembering 16-year-old Charlie in ways I had forgotten. He had zeroed in our other friend on the trip, a single, cute, free-spirited backpacker, the way he used to zero in on girls at parties, and spent the week trying to impress her. People have said they find my laugh inspiring, he actually said at one point. My favorite films are 1940s Korean dramas, he boasted during a long car ride, as if that made him deep and interesting, especially following on the heels of my declaration that Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates was one of my favorite movies of all time. God, why I am I so mainstream? Why can’t I be more like Charles, who loves culture, who loves philosophy, who speaks in tongues using big words he knows the rest of us uncouth idiots would not understand to prove he is above our brittle intelligence.

I knew my anger and annoyance with him was a bit stronger than was fair. Had this been my first experience with Charlie trying to impress a girl by any means possible, I might have looked past it. But it was not. It was my 50th. My 600th. My I’ve-lost-count-of-how-many-times. Him following around our mutual friend, wanting to do what she wanted to do, agreeing with everything she said, while simultaneously ignoring my friendship, disagreeing with me seemingly no matter what I said, and quite literally locking me out of rooms they were in, took me back to years in high school. I was for no reason compared to the girls he liked. See those girls, he had said once while we were on the small New Hampshire coast line, about to jump into the cold sea, those girls are cute. Those girls deserve to wear bikinis. The girls in focus were young, thin, pretty. To this day, when dressing in a bathing suit, I wonder if I have finally been awarded the coveted prize of deserving to wear a bathing suit on a beach on a summer day. I’ve concluded that if my 16-year-old size 4 self didn’t deserve it, how could my 34-year-old size 10 self?

I will say this — Charlie has apologized to me for this comment. I have forgiven him…I guess. But in Costa Rica I felt the ghost of this Charlie I hadn’t seen or heard from in over ten years. I felt it when he would say time to gorge! when I was simply eating my dinner, as if I were eating my dinner in a pile and hissing at others who even came close to my treasures. I felt it in the way I sat in the backseat of the long car rides through mountain landscapes and ocean views, when I’d listen to the two of them talk endlessly, about what I don’t remember, and how I’d quickly feel dismissed by him when joining in the conversation. 

I wanted to scream at him most of this trip. You can try to sleep with our friend and still be my friend!!!! I wanted to shout. You can get laid and not put other women down in the process!! I wished to wail. But I knew by saying anything remotely like this he would tell me I was wrong. My perception of him was being misconstrued of course, it was all in my head. So I stomached it as much as I could, only saying a bit of my peace in the car ride to the airport. When I thought my time with Charlie was coming to an end.

Turns out my time with Charlie was not coming to an end anytime soon. 

Halfway through what was technically allowed to be called a meal, a man sitting at a small table next to the window overlooking the runway got up out of his seat. He looked over at us and did “the nod.”. You know the nod. It is a gesture that said he too had had a long, bullshit day of travel, and was not exactly excited to be in the Atlanta airport 20 minutes to midnight on a Monday night. 

“Fried chicken wasn’t too bad,” he said, holding up his own styrofoam to-go container with chicken bones and bread crumbs littering the bottom.

I nodded back at him. I could barely hear. Did I mention by this point I was also in the thick of what might have been the worst flu I’d ever had? Nose swollen on the inside, head so hot to touch I was nervous I’d catch on fire, chills running through my body despite the sweat. It was the cherry on top of the shit sandwich that was waiting for a delayed flight with a person you wished to exile to an island for all his horny sins.

“Yeah, it is really good!” Charlie said. He was too peppy. Yes, I was being knit picky. I know it. But the sound of his pep, while I sat there dying, just felt like another slight. Another needlessly opposite move to distinguish himself as not on my side.

“Where you all headed?” The man asked us. He had a slight southern accent I would have enjoyed more if I didn’t have three gallons of fluid gushing through my ears.

“Boston.” Charlie answered.

The man shook his head, looking pained.

“Oh no, Boston?” Man, that is tough.”

My stomach sank. What did he mean that is tough?

“I heard you can’t get to Boston right now.” He said. It was then I realized he wasn’t just some passenger. He was decked out in a Delta uniform. A flight attendant. This man knew the insider information only the elite Airline crews knew. And the information he delivered was the city I longed for so desperately was, apparently, unreachable.

“Oh yeah?” Charlie said, prompting him to say more. 

“Yeah, lots of cancelled flights from the wind.”

I had been checking the weather obsessively that entire day. Boston had been windy all of Sunday and a good portion of the morning. But according to my weather app, all the bad weather had passed. I wanted to tell this nice flight attendant  “now the skies were CLEAR and PERFECT. In fact, no better time has ever been had for flying. I know this because not because I have had training/experience in the world of aviation, but because I am a child of GOD who would NEVER leave me stranded in the airport with my childhood friend I want to murder.”

The man gave us yet another nod.

“Good luck getting home!” he said casually and then left us. As if he didn’t just speak my worst travel fears aloud, tip his hat, and say gday mate, leaving me to tend to my growing fire of anxieties.

“The winds have died down a lot since this afternoon,” I said out loud, more to myself than to Charlie. “We will be fine.”

“Yeah, we’ll be good.” he confirmed.

Like a balloon letting out a little air, I relaxed. Much like the plane’s deicing, Charlie was also deicing. He was no longer 100 ft within a single viable woman. He was slowly returning to the friend he typically is — a person who doesn’t contradict me constantly and who goes out of his way to get me cold medicine, like he did only an hour before. I missed this version of him. But I was still ready for a break. Not just from him. But from the entire world.

“Let’s go to the gate.” I said. 

With that we threw out garbage and walked to our gate, setting up shop in the middle of a row of seats, sandwiched between people also waiting for this flight to begin boarding.

By 1:30am our flight had been delayed three times. Once by 12 minutes, to which I thought, ok? Only 12 minutes. Super specific but not bad. The second time by a half hour. I sighed, looking at the board time slip again. Fine, I thought. What’s another half hour? By the third delay, which pushed our departure time — not board time, mind you — another 6 minutes, I looked outside at our plane sitting at the gate, empty of humans, lights turned off, and realized with certainty we were doomed. No way we’d be even boarding in 6 minutes, let alone flying off into the sky. 

Charlie was watching a movie next to me on his iPad. I have to give it to him. He was watching an old Korean film, subtitled and all. Perhaps he wasn’t trying to impress our friend with his love of deep cut Korean cinema. Or maybe he was so committed to impressing her he was watching this film in the airport in hopes I’d glance over, see him watching it, and text our friend about it. 

Around 2:30, 2 hours after our scheduled departure, the woman working the gate desk opened up a line to finally communicate some of the secret workings of how planes work.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are waiting on a pilot, who should be here any minute. We need the pilot to fly the plane. Thank you.”

Absolutely ground breaking update. 

I latched onto the part about a pilot being close by. I kept telling myself I’d only be sitting in this chair made of cement, the back so curved my spine had shifted into a C from sitting there so long, for just a few more minutes. Soon they’d board. I’d be home by 6am, in my bed next to my child and husband, cold medicine in my nightstand waiting for me to chug.

At 2:45 the flight was delayed again to 3:05am. I thought back to the omen of the man in the food court. He was wrong, I told myself. The pilot was going to be there, cryptically enough, any minute. But my stomach felt alive, my fear and intuition melting together into the bottom of my intestines, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the departure board changed from “delayed” to canceled.”

3:05 came and went. I was sitting on my knees in the chair, arms wrapped around the seat, watching the board. It was 3:08. The board proclaimed we have left already. I wondered if I had died and maybe had gone to hell. Then, just as I imagined, the departure board changed. A red screen displayed Canceled. The other passengers watching the board around me gave an exasperated sigh in unison. Angry words started accumulating in the waiting area. Mine included. I couldn’t stop swearing. I was so tired, so angry, so dumbfounded. All feelings that intensified when the same woman working the desk earlier got back on the loud speaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the flight has been canceled.” She said, as if people weren’t already aware. “All the hotels in the area are booked.”

The crowd roared in displeasure. 

“If you let me finish!” the woman continued, clearly sick of our shit, despite the fact she had just told us our fate was you’re stuck in this airport indefinitely. “The hotels are booked in the area. But we will work on rebooking new flights. Please wait here…”

“I’m going to go to customer service.” Charlie declared. 

Of course he was, I thought. The woman had said to stay there, so naturally he wanted to leave. I wasn’t particularly hopeful in the agitated woman working the desk to help us, but I also didn’t want to create additional chaos or miss out on something by leaving. 

“She just said to say here.” I said. 

“Fine. You stay here, I’ll go look around.” He was curt and clearly angry. 

“Fine.” I said, matching his tone.

With that, he left. I stood there, taking in my circumstances. I left my airbnb in Costa Rica at 9am Monday. It was now 3am Tuesday. My throat felt as if it had been clawed by a cat. My ears ached and my body was still emitting heat and sweat. My family — who I had missed so much the last few days I could hardly stand it — was not in the near future, as I had imagined. And there I was, alone, watching angry people scramble around an airport with seemingly no one around working to help us. 

I don’t remember how we got from point A — the flight being cancelled —- to point B — sitting in an area with everyone else from our flights, waiting to use what looked like a payphone that connected us to a customer service representative from who-knows-where, but around 4am I found myself there, sitting on the ground charging my phone, furiously scouring the outbound flights to Boston on my Delta App. All of the flights were booked. We had the glorious option of being on stand-by all day, on the off chance someone decided they actually didn’t want to take the flight they had purchased and planned for that day.

It was at this point I started crying. I was holding it in prior to this. I didn’t want to be the woman with all her emotions crying. Frankly, I was surprised no one else was crying. Why weren’t they as mad as I was? This giant ass corporation sold us a service, then canceled said service, then said sorry we don’t have a new flight or a hotel or any idea of when you’ll be home but here is $24 dollars in airport food credits! Not even $25. What? WHAT? I actually was the only person reacting appropriately to the situation by crying.

“What are we going to do?” I cried, my voice pathetic, my nose running. “We’ve been in an airport for 15 hours. I’m sick.” 

I felt pathetic. Not strong, cool, calm, collected, like I wished I could be in these moments. But the reality is I am emotional. I react. I voice my feelings. It’s just who I am. 

Charlie seemed to take this expression of anger and hurt as directed at him. His demeanor, which was understandably on edge after the flight was canceled, shifted to annoyance. Not with the situation. But with me. Oh, how the tables had turned.

“I don’t know!” he snapped. “I’m trying to figure out what we do next!”

My anger towards Delta and airlines in general shifted in an instant back to Charlie.

“Don’t get pissy with me,” I snapped back. 

“I’m not!” he responded, very notably pissy. “They’ll book us another flight, you don’t have to get so upset.”

If I could have I would have picked him up, snapped his spine over my knees, and drank the spillage of his blood. Don’t have to get so upset?! Not only do I have a strong hatred for men diminishing women’s emotions when they’re anything but pleasant, but like, give me a break? I was tired, sick, missing my family, and had no idea of when I’d be on a flight out of there. Is that not the perfect recipe to make one distressed?

“I’m allowed to be upset!” I basically screamed. “Don’t make me feel like an asshole for reacting.”

“I’m not making you feel like an asshole! We can….” he paused, trying to pull a flawless travel home plan out of his ass to throw in my face, to show me that I was indeed overreacting to this casual and cool situation we were enduring. “Rent a car.”

I glared at him.

“I’m not renting a car. It’s like an 18 hour drive.”

He paused. Looked at his phone. I turned away from him. I was still crying, shaking with rage, and feeling isolated in a way that I often do around men. A feeling of shrinking, like my interpretation of the world and things around me is so off, like there is something wrong with me. I wanted nothing to do with him or anyone around me. 

Eventually it was Charlie’s turn to pick up the phone in the sea of wall-phones. I listened to other people around us book flights to cities nearby Boston and as I heard them, suggested them to Charlie.

“Try NYC,” I said, and Charlie would repeat into the phone.

“Nothing?” I heard him say and then would say another city.

“Hartford? Providence? Albany?”

In retrospect I can see my urgency to get an answer – not from Charlie, but rather the agent on the other line — was added stress. But at the moment all I wanted was a plan to move. I’d have gotten on 4 different planes all over the country to get out of Atlanta, as long as they eventually took me home to Boston.

“Ask if they have Newark,” I said.

“Give me a minute,” Charlie snarled. And although, perhaps, this snarl was more justified than the last, I was beyond giving him grace. Grace for him had gone out the window two days prior the most symbolic event of how he was treating me happened — he got up out of the chair I was sitting on the end of and sent me toppling over to the ground when the weight of the chair became off-balanced. Being snapped at by him felt much like that moment — like I was being literally tossed to the ground, useless, not worth a thing to the person who I thought was my friend.

I might have told him to f*ck off. It’s not as if I was being wildly mature in my rage. But I don’t remember. All I remember is searching other airlines for flights to Newark, as I knew we could get the train from there to Boston. I had done it years prior when another flight of mine was canceled and although it wasn’t ideal, it was better than sitting in the airport for another 15 hours and waiting to catch a flight on happenstance. 

I found a flight, departing at 6:30am, only two hours from then.

“I’m booking us a flight to Newark and we can take a train from there.” I told Charlie.

By then he was off the phone, the customer service agent having helped us 0%.

“I’d rather rent a car.”

Part of me wanted to scream at him. Can’t you just accept anything I say without changing or disagreeing? But by then I didn’t care. I had purchased the flights and was ready to begin walking to the next gate, leaving Delta behind for good.

“Whatever,” I said, and with that we began walking to our new terminal.

Hours later, as I sat on the train —- because a rental car was infinitely more expensive than my train plan —- I reflected on the previous week. From the joy of swimming in the Costa Rican ocean to the hurt of feeling discarded to the wrath of the flight cancellation. I was much calmer by then. I had slept (barely). I had watched myself get closer and closer to home by seeing the cities come and go outside the train window. My anger at Charlie seemed to shrink at each stop, and by Rhode Island, I started to rethink the whole experience through another point of view.

Being a man, if you subscribe to traditional roles (I do not) puts pressure on you. To be the sole provider, to not have emotions, to be so tough that something as trivial as being stuck in an airport for a full day is just a big fat bowl of “whatevs”. When the flight was canceled there was no point to which I turned to him and said “it’s on you now, soldier, find us a way home.” And yet, that must have been how he felt. My tears were, in his head, a reflection of how he had failed. My anger was a direct jab at his incompetence. In his mind he was to be the saviour and any sign of distress on my end was clearly a rejection of him.

Hilariously enough I was on my side of things, desperate to be seen and heard and not dismissed, and the two of us were talking right past one another. 

I thought of his need to be attractive to our friend. I couldn’t figure out why he had to treat me differently while pursuing someone. I’m not sure I will ever get an answer to this. I feel like if I were to ask him, he would say it wasn’t on purpose or that this feeling was all in my head. But as I sat on the train, my head resting on the cold window, I thought of what a stressful prison it is to be involved in this push and pull of patriarchal values, conscious or not. Me, living with the constant need to punish those with a patriarchal view of me. Charlie, trying to live up to the unrealistic patriarchal standards. Instead of fighting the idea of this prison, we were fighting each other.  What an exhausting way to live.

I closed my eyes and listened to the wheels clicking on the tracks beneath me. I vowed to do my best to let go; of the need to control the perception of me, of the anger I felt toward my friend, who at the end of the day, was someone I did care about. I knew vowing to let go was not as easy as the act to let go. But deciding to loosen the grip was the first step.