Heartbreak Airlines

Pre-script: This is the last Cheeky Wanderer blog.

It took every inch in the heels of my red cowboy boots not to turn back and jump on the next train out of the station. I wanted to flee from the dimming lights of the emergency exit. I wanted to run down the airstrip in my red cowboy boots screaming, my arms flailing widly. I closed my eyes and wished to be the sexy 20-something star in the film watching as my hunky co-star pushes through the wall of flight attendants crying for me not to leave.

I dived into the pool of short-term memory as I willed my feet through the airport, swimming through my last goodbye. My mind told me that we cannot have a repeat of the train station; the scene of my tearful goodbye. I gave the middle aged women on the train something to believe. I gave them first row seats to a tissue filled with snot and running mascara. I left the evidence of this scene in the train bin, although, I did for a moment consider reaching in to take it back for my soon to be made Brighton box. He watched as I walked to my train, he even watched as the service minded train station employee helped me with my two ton luggage. I craned my neck out of the train doors under the threat of decapitation, but I could not see the blonde dreads of my darling Englishman. I swallowed the rising lump in my throat as my mind drifted back to the train station. I began to dissect the final goodbye; wishing I had said one more word or hugged him in a better way. I recalled as we said our goodbyes how I wanted it to end and allow the hovering pain to envelop me. I wanted to begin my descent into misery, I cried for the uphill creep to the drop on the rollercoaster to just get on with it. But then as I crossed the metal bars at the threshold, I wanted one more look, and one more touch. I wanted to turn back.

Despite warnings from both the well wishers and the naysayers alike, I told my boyfriend I loved him...because I do. My reasoning was as such:

I looked around my Sussex campus and thought to myself, no, this is not it.

I walked around Brighton, and I thought to myself, no, this is not it.

I strolled down to the seafront and watched the British wind whip up the waves, and I thought to myself, no, this is just not it.

Then in the early morning of the day before my departure when the sky was just waking up, I turned to my sleeping boyfriend, his eyes decidedly closed in some grand dream, his arms curled around the pillow, and I thought to myself, yes, this is it. You are what I will miss.

This blog is without a doubt the offspring of my despair over having to leave my boyfriend who only the night before did I muster the courage to tell him I loved him. For once I will not apologize for the extra cheese. My fist-size heart is beating slower, and the resident butterflies in my tummy have fallen silent. I am aware that this a "blog," and not a diary, but I ask that the word blog be defined for me.

Blog: an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog, Web log

(Thank you dictionary.com)

Turns out a blog is by its very definition a diary, an "online diary" to be exact. The Cheeky Wanderer, and the now Confessions of a Scalawag, are 1/4 of my therapy, and I am asserting my ideas of socialist medicine, and demanding my right to free treatment.

Now that I have provided a sufficient excuse for the emotional state of this blog I shall continue.

I bought a granola yoghurt to munch in the possibility that my hunger might trump my heartbreak. It was the Gatwick twin of the kind at my old local Sainsburys (tears). I didn't open it for several hours for fear that I would begin to cry, that the flight attendant might take it away, or worse, make me share. I wondered how I could leave the place that gave my Ryan. I desperately wanted to tell the woman sitting to my right about him, and my recent declaration of love, but she had her husband with her. I only had envy to comfort me. The plane taxied slowly, and I am overwhelmed with regret. Forgive me friends and family, but as I sat slumped in my plane seat, head leaned against the window, he was all I could think about. I wanted to be alone to allow myself to have a good and proper cry, but I could not afford first class. I did not want a repeat of the train ride. The proximity to which I sat near the woman was too close for snot and mascara tissues.

The plane engines fired, the vibrations began to spread through the soles of my feet. The purr of the metal machine grew, and I debate abandoning my plans to return home. This was not merely an idea to dangle, but a serious urge of the Id my Ego struggled to contain. I silently screamed hurry before I give in to my desires of exit. Then she began to move, slowly at first, and I could feel the tears rising. I fought them back as I had just dried and re-applied makeup to my stained cheeks. I began to wish I had purchased a box of potent sleeping pills.

I whispered goodbye and I love you to the background on my phone, and prayed no one heard and thought me mental. And then the plane took off, and I knew I was gone.

I watched until I could no longer see the green patchwork quilt of England, and I was amongst the English clouds filled to the edges with their rain. My temperature begin to drop. It is possible it was the freezing air blowing in my face from above, but I think it was my body missing the warmth of my hairy boyfriend. I could only find a blanket covered in the fuzz of uncertainty to cover my rapidly cooling shoulders.

The plane was littered with signs of Ryan. The crossword puzzle we had done in Menorca, the Manchester dot on the map of England on my personal tv screen, Princess Bride as a film option. I hoped, and still hope, as I write the account of my heartbreak flight, that they are signs of the positive. I needed distraction, and so I turned to Penelope to see if there was any consolation to be found in Christina Ricci.

I sit here on the day after my departure, and I know that the lump has taken up permanent residence in my throat. The parasite of heartache has found its new home, but I ask of him not to leave, but to promise to take holidays every now and again.

*All events described actually happened*

"But there's one woman in the back left corner who looks like she could really use the support."