Welcome Back
I'm writing this on a flight home from La Guardia, where I’m returning from a blissful, albeit exhausting, 26 hours in Athens, Greece. Last week I was in Cabo, Mexico, and last month I was in Hawaii and the Cayman Islands.
I took an unexcused absence from this creative project, which I’d like to explain and explain its subsequent resurgence. I was craving a certain level of privacy, disguised as a guise for attention. Sort of like when you were a kid, and you would pretend to be sick so your mom would let you stay home from school. Or as a talkative child, I would go to school with the mission of not speaking all day so my peers would ask me what was wrong. An endeavor that would inevitably fail when I forgot the plan by lunchtime, gossiping away in the cafeteria.
I privatized all my social media, stopped writing, and remained silent in hopes of some sort of breakthrough. My recent endeavor into mystery only left me forgetting the sound of my own voice and channeling my creative depletion into self-pity. It did not reap the unrequited rewards I thought I wanted, I thought I deserved.
Since I was a child, I've had a strange affinity for airports. Easily explained by the countless hours I spent as an unaccompanied minor flying 1,030 miles every school break as cargo of a custody agreement.
I had an epiphany one day, after being home from Madrid. Most of these days were spent depressed and mourning my chic European lifestyle. Juxtaposed with my new bleak life in my parents' home, I was aimless. On the other days of the week, I stumbled into a caregiving job for a family friend. Joann is a 90-year-old woman who suffered an unfortunate stroke. She was still reasonably cognizant and wittily quippy, but she needed someone with her at all times. Mostly to ensure she didn’t forget where she was and wander down the street with her walker. Or just to cut her sandwiches at lunch.
And there I was: a bright, useless, 20-something in need of a job, and suffering from severe nostalgia. Joann was shockingly positive and rarely complained about her newfound state of disability. She could still feed herself and get around just fine, but she had trouble remembering what day it was and how to get her audiobook to play on her iPad. Most of all, she needed company. Arguably, I needed it more.
Where I last abandoned this internal monologue dedicated to my own self-importance, I was heartbroken. Utterly useless and sad with words, I could never be vulnerable enough to post here. This might be morbid and inappropriate and dramatized, but hear me out. I’ve had many family members die. I've attended more funerals than normal by the age of 15. However, the worst emotional pain of my life was recovering from my first love.
If I'm being vulgarly honest, in the beginning stages of my job search, I was looking for anything in Europe that would give me access to a reunion. A small hope of ending up back in Europe.
Daydreaming of sending a falsely casual text one day: “Oh, hey, I'm in Belgium.”
Creeping my way back into another painful goodbye with the same broken person. A deluded ambition of holding on to the girl I used to be.
The likelihood of that occurring is comically low. But in desperation, any sliver of hope is nourishment. Embarrassingly, not where I thought I would be one year later. I still think of him often. I think of him when I put my contacts in every morning. On days when I'm angry, I have one-sided arguments with his ghost. And of course, I journal about him more often than I care to admit. But it’s the truth. Love is ugly and horrifying at times. It’s also quite beautiful how one can balance total obsession with total repulsion for one's own desire.
Stay with me, I'm getting somewhere soon.
Some days on Joann’s beigey floral, butt-imprinted couch purchased 20 years ago, I wrote. It was on that couch that something changed. I berated myself for leaving Europe and applied for jobs for hours on end. Every day I cried. Usually, during nap time, or when I let the 16-year-old chihuahua, Rosie, outside before she shit on the carpet just to prove she didn’t want me there.
Inevitably, we became friends. Me and Joann, never Rosie. I told her of my dreams, my plans, my stories, gallivanting around the globe. My tragic and recent heartbreak. She imparted decades of wisdom. It was after her second stroke that I realized how much I had grown to care for her. Days of dosing her medication, reading the newspaper, and sitting outside watching the neighbor's dog suddenly didn’t seem so trivial. It was in that living room, sitting across from an aged woman in the decades of her unchanged home, that we came to an epiphany.
We had been brainstorming ideas for my future as we usually did, and suddenly someone said, “flight attendant”. I’ll never forget the way her face lit up. “Well, yeah, that’d be perfect!” She said in her thick southern Arkansas twang. “Why didn’t we thank of that before?” she said, face twisting into disbelief, as if the answer had been so simply accessible the whole time. She smiled ear to ear, wrinkles revealing her still bright, twinkly eyes when she was in one of her good moods.
I applied to all the big companies- Delta, American, United. Excited for the first time in months and convinced I was an easy hire. Two weeks later, after dozens of AI assessments and online modules, I was denied.
“They just don’t even know what they’re missing,” she said as I was back on her couch, butt imprint growing and Christmas quickly approaching. My panic was setting in for a New Year and my still undecided future.
One day, a few months later, after I had all but given up the idea. (I instead resolved to attend a month-long yoga retreat in Bali to change my life) But a friend sent me a job application for a private airline. An option I hadn’t even considered. With low expectations, I submitted an application. Then, I got an email. Then we scheduled an interview. Then I completed two online Teams Meetings. Then, I flew to Ohio for an in-person interview, and two weeks later, I moved there for an entire month to complete flight attendant training.
Joann was happier for me than I was for myself. Now, as I've acclimated to my new lifestyle, I go and visit Joann, telling her of my adventures when I can. It pains me to see her health decline, but I'm happy my stories can be some respite of entertainment for her. I’d like them to be for others as well. I’d love it if you'd stick around to read as I transition my blog to share my new adventures.
If I thought I was well-traveled before, this takes it to a whole new level. I travelled over 14,000 miles across the globe just last week.
How comforting is the irony that God has something better for me than what I had planned for myself.
Now, I'm a “professional” Flight Attendant. The first month of training was full of confusion and impostor syndrome. Most people spend their whole careers in aviation trying to break into the private sector. I got in with luck, a genuine attitude, and past experience in hospitality.
The best adventures of my life have stemmed from decisions based on how much fun I'm going to have. For example, when I moved to Nantucket for the summer with my best friend, Madison, I was quite terrified, even though my fear often manifests itself as bitchiness. I thought that sounded a hell of a lot more fun than spending my summer post-college graduation unemployed in Sand Springs, Oklahoma. So I went, and I met some of my most cherished friendships. Which led me to become a yacht stewardess, which led me to become a flight attendant on private jets 4 years later.
Another example, when I moved to Madrid. I had never even been to Europe before I packed 3 large checked bags and signed my life away for a year. I hated it for at least the first six months. My Spanish was awful, I found the people to be rude (although now I appreciate their directness), and I was basically homeless for the first month. But two things I had in Spain were my best friend, Madison, and a new best friend we had made on the island, Hunter. We met him on Nantucket that summer, and serendipitously, he lives in Madrid the other half of the year he’s not on Nantucket. He takes care of his grandmother there and boasts an enviable Spanish passport.
There were a lot of good reasons to move to Madrid that I would cite. All of them being words that include “low cost of living, working experience, personal development” descriptors to give to parents or in job interviews. But the real deciding factor for me was FUN. It sounded like the most fun thing to do next. Rather than enter the corporate workforce, using my journalism degree in some dead-end copywriting gig or marketing scheme, I decided to try something different.
In time, I'm sure even I will grow weary of the boring tale of a broken heart, but for now I’ll milk it for all its creative juices.
I remember one of our last conversations,
“I just can’t imagine what you’ll do next.”
In his mind, that statement had a negative connotation. In my mind, that was positive. In succinct summation, it's why we never worked. I never imagined this life either. But look at me now.
If you don’t mind, I have lots of stories to tell, some personal, some superficial, some I was too sad to tell, some I was too scared to. But with time comes distance and the bravery to be vulnerable. In this last adventure, still in pursuit of FUN, I'm finding myself in serendipitous situations that must mean I'm on the path of alignment. The most recent example was on my trip to Athens, which will be my next story as I revitalize this passion of mine.
If you’ve made it thus far, thank you for reading, and I look forward to committing to the unknown enjoyment ahead.