Airport Limbo, A Bittersweet Tale

Airport limbo: A bittersweet tale of leaving people behind when going to the airport, and no longer being a part of their world.

There’s something about being in an airport that always inspires me. Being between the hustle and bustle of people trying to find their gates, mothers chasing after their toddlers, and lovebirds running off to elope… that’s when I find my biggest inspirations to write. I think that the inspiration stems from the fact that I find myself in some sort of space and time limbo. Let me explain.

I once heard this woman say something that changed the way I dealt with stress. In summary, she said that certain forms of stress just aren’t worth it. Don’t get me wrong, some form of stress and anxiety is good – remember the first time you went out on a date with someone you liked? That stress is good. However, certain events or situations are entirely out of our control and of which the consequences are minute. That’s the key: the consequences are minute.

I still remember the example she gave. She painted the picture with the morning commute to work. She’s on the subway, but the train runs late for whatever reason. She knows that because of this delay, she will be late to work. And what does she do? She just waits. She doesn’t let her heart beat harder and body temperature rise and she doesn’t start frantically biting her cuticles. She just sits and waits and goes about the rest of her day as if nothing had happened.

The train schedule is out of her control. The consequences of her tardiness aren’t life or death. She won’t get fired because of this. She’ll just be a little late to work.

And so I’ve applied this to my life whenever I can. And honestly, it’s quite an addictive form of thinking. When I feel rattled for whatever reason, I think to myself “what can I do to make this better? Is there anything in my power I can do to fix the situation I’m in? If so, can it be done immediately?” If the answer isn’t yes to that last one, then I know that the stress isn’t worth my time. So I take a step back (figuratively), I take control of my breathing, I refocus my thoughts and I try as much as I can to lower my body temperature (literally). And then I repeat to myself that the consequences are small, almost insignificant. In 10 years – hell, in 2 hours probably – I would have forgotten all about it. And every single time, the day goes on.

I’m telling you. It’s such an addictive form of processing information.

But the thing is that even if I control my stress for that particular scenario, there is always another task that I can put my mind to. There’s always something to do, someone to talk to, or deadlines to meet.

Life is life, right? Actions bring consequences. Finishing one task leads you to another. If you finish something earlier, you just make room for another task.

But in an airport… I’m in this weird limbo. It feels as if my life, my choices and their consequences are in suspended animation. I could do anything and no one would ever know, and my life will be affected in no way. It’s an oddly liberating feeling. Oddly empowering.

And as I write this, I try to figure out why exactly I feel this way. If I start by trying to understand it spatially, it feels as if I’m neither here nor there. What I mean by this is that it feels as if I’m neither in the departure city nor have I arrived at my destination. I know that I’m still technically in the departure city, but it doesn’t feel like such. Why is that?

When you say that you’re in a city, let’s take Paris as an example, there are trademark things that you’d be able to do. You can waltz into any bakery and get fresh bread, you can walk along the Seine, and you can picnic by the Eiffel tower. That might be a romanticized ideal of Paris, but the point is that you have to abide by the French unwritten rules. You are surrounded by the Parisian culture. You’re in Paris.

But say that you go to Charles de Gaulle, a major Paris airport, already past security. You’re not really in Paris anymore. At least, it doesn’t feel like it. You aren’t able to do the trademark things that make you be in a city. It’s as if you were to be observing the city through a looking-glass. Close, but not close enough.

On top of that, you’re on the brink of a million other looking-glasses. A plane leaves for Stockholm in 30 minutes. A woman is on her layover from Tokyo. You hear Spanish, German, Arabic and hundreds of other languages reminding you of a million different places. You see a thousand faces all coming from a billion different cities. You’re neither there nor here. Nothing is from anywhere, and everything is from everywhere. You’re in spacial limbo.

Now, let’s say that I try to understand this feeling of being in limbo in terms of time. It feels like we live in a world where we have to hit the ground running, and just keep running. Towards what we are running is still a mystery to me, but still, we keep running. Towards the next meeting, towards the next client, towards the next pay raise. Always running. Maybe that’s what makes the world go around.

Like I said, always running down the timeline, emphasis on line. But then, being in an airport is like someone picking you up from the hem of your pants. You know like what fathers do with their toddlers, leaving them just an inch above ground with the legs kicking frantically but getting nowhere? Your legs keep running, but you aren’t going anywhere, are you?

Your legs just keep going back and forth, but the ground beneath you stays the same. Nothing you do will make you go forward any quicker. Nothing you do will allow you to keep running down the timeline. You’re not going forward, you can’t go backwards, and you’re lifted into the air, so you aren’t even… in time. You’re in limbo.

Being in an airport feels like that. It feels like I’ve been picked up by the hem of my pants, lifted just a little off the ground and unable to move forward or backwards. No matter what you do, it won’t make the next thing come by any quicker. You aren’t even in time, you’re floating right on top of it.

And I think that because I am nowhere and everywhere at the same time, there’s nothing I can do but purely be in the moment. Only think about what I have right in front of my eyes. And only think about how that makes me feel.

So let me tie all this up with the earlier stress anecdote. If I feel like I’m not in a physical space, and I feel like I’m not part of time, then I’m not part of anything. And so the stress that I could potentially feel, and for this matter, any other feeling that I could feel, just isn’t worth it. It has no effect.

As I’m writing this, I surprise myself that this craziness that I’m babbling about isn’t only in my head. I think back at all the times I’ve been in the airport, as well as all the people I’ve left behind by getting on that plane, and I find myself acting on this feeling of not being part of space or time.

Again, let me explain this to you.

If I’d have to summarise my life in one word, it would be plane or leaving. Or, in a more developed phrase, never for too long in the same place. Though the psychological repercussions of that is a story for another time, it is what it is. The point of me saying this is that I’ve had a lot of teary and sad goodbyes at the airport. Without even mentioning the thousand times I’ve left my parents and my brother on the other side of the gate, as of late I’ve also had to say goodbye to one person of whom I’m very fond.

Whenever I say goodbye, my eyes get full of tears and I can’t get words out. I’ve figured out a lot of things in my life and I’ve come to understand a lot of my reactions, but my inability to speak at certain moments – not only at airport goodbyes – is still a mystery to me. Anyhow, back to the point: I can’t get words out. The feeling of sadness is overwhelming.

But as soon as I turn my back to the person, and go through security, I enter this state of suspended animation. The feeling of overwhelming and word-suppressing sadness is but a distant memory. I don’t feel sad anymore, I don’t feel low or gloomy.

The closest thing that I can compare it to is the moment after grief. I find it funny how I compare it to grief because the only thing I’ve had to grieve is a broken heart a long time ago, but never the death of a person. But I think it feels that way. The moment after you have realized that you will survive it, when flowers start being colourful again, and you don’t feel guilty for laughing or smiling or loving someone else.

That feeling where your emotions start coming to the surface again, where you’re learning how to walk on your own two feet, when you just start to allow things to happen to you instead of just having all that happen around you. That weird re-birth moment where all the dark and sad feelings are finally something that you can consider of the past, that’s what it feels like when I step on the other side of the security check.

And the guilt of that eats me up every single time. The not feeling sad for leaving someone behind, the sudden dry eyes as if no tears had fallen from them in a decade… the guilt of that eats me up. I’m leaving a person – or people – that I love behind and all I can feel is a tiny little pinch in my heart, as if the heartbreak had happened years ago.

So that’s what I mean when I feel like I’m in limbo. It feels like I’m not part of time, like I’m not part of space, and it feels like my life and emotions are no longer part of my life. It’s like those movies when someone moved away to another city to reinvent themselves, leaving everything and everyone behind. For the time that I am in the airport, I have left everyone and everything behind, only to get them all back again as soon as I land wherever it is that I’m heading.

And I guess that for someone that lived most of her life running away from people and from emotions, every time that I land is a reminder that I don’t want to run away anymore.