tumblr_mziajwEMpg1rmght3o1_500

I fly over Kentucky with a boyfriend who only seems to want to hold my hand when the plane takes off, lands or experiences turbulence. He sleeps beside me draped in a red Delta blanket. My favorite black and white scarf is around my shoulders. We’re headed to Dallas and should have been there at 3:30pm, but we missed our flight, got re-booked on a second, gave up our seats for $600 Delta vouchers, were placed back on the flight (no free trips!), were rerouted due to storms, then the plane needed fuel so we had to land in Louisville, Kentucky. I am sure there is some sort of cliché here – sometimes in life you get re-routed; sometimes you need to stop to refuel. As my 16 year-old self would say, “whatever!” But if we are to accept the cliché, yes, my life has been re-routed on various occasions and sometimes I have had to stop to refuel and sometimes rest a bit before taking off again.

Turbulence.

I fly often but I feel different each time. This trip I feel so much different because this trip to Dallas was for my college friend’s wedding. The past five weeks have been.. I don’t even have words. A Ph.D. dissertation which seemed on track five weeks ago is now off-track and I have lost all motivation and zeal to complete it right now. And to think I lost a prior relationship for this degree which is supposed to put me where I supposedly want to be – a life of academia which until five weeks ago I totally could not wait to start. Now, five weeks later, I am of the opinion that academia is not for me. Within five weeks, my workload and family obligations increased and my boyfriend… well…. what is the opposite of ‘increase’?

(Especially when I have needed him the most.)

Maybe Dallas will bring me something different. I don’t know. I remember going to Spain by myself and feeling so alive and sure of myself as I walked the streets of Madrid in the rain with no one to hold my hands to guide me, but moving forward with the help of my map and most times instinct while discovering the most beautiful things! I remember Prague. I got onto the wrong tram and when I questioned a young woman who sat beside me about my stop, although she could not fully understand English, she took my hand and with her finger and she drew the number ‘8’ on my palm. I was to take the number 8 tram! I will never forget that.

I know this feeling well though…. the lost feeling, where things just do not seem to make any sense although you have tried and pushed and cried and prayed for them to. But I have always found something, or saw something, or experienced something to get me right back on track. The only person who would understand how I feel has moved to Los Angeles now. Oh how times have changed! We used to hold hands and walk and discover new, cool and exciting places in Brooklyn- dive bars, tiny tucked-away Caribbean restaurants with the best coconut shrimp, free concerts in Prospect Park, beautiful architecture in Fort Greene. We also discovered ourselves and what made us happy, what left us feeling at peace- two young people in our early 20’s back then! Oh well. Dallas! Some time with old friends who knew me when I was much younger as we figured our way through undergrad, holding each other’s hands literally and metaphorically may be what I need. I think we land in an hour. In fact, maybe my boyfriend will wake up and hold my hand. I would like that very much.

The next day, my boyfriend- the man I loved and truly believed I would spend the rest of my life with told me after much coaxing, that he was unsure of me. We have never held hands since.

Aleah
Pitched Entry