Straight Ahead
Photo by Troy Nikolic on Unsplash
It’s only 9 PM, but it may as well be 4 AM on this airplane. Time stands still in the in-between of the place you’ve left and the place you’re going. The lights are out and the passengers are deeply asleep — mouths open, heads titled, light snores. I’m in the middle seat of the cramped airbus, breathing stale air beside a whimpering baby and battling a hangover that first found its roots a month ago. As I try to settle into my seat, getting ready to attempt my usual hour or two of sleep, something catches my eye. In the gap between the two seats ahead of me, a young couple is staring at each other, wordlessly communicating in the language in which he and I used to be fluent. The girl lowers her head onto his shoulder, and it fits perfectly. They look like a painting, and it feels as though I’ve inadvertently stumbled upon something sacred. I’m trespassing. He softly kisses her forehead and, suddenly, there are tears in my eyes.
The tears are irrational; I know that. Others can’t hide their relationships and shirk from sharing their love stories because mine has come to a screeching halt. Time feels as though it has stood still since we first said it was over, and yet, it hasn’t. Life has gone on around me while I’ve stayed stagnant, shocked into stillness. The only thing I can manage is to look back at what I’ve lost and mourn, to watch an endless highlight reel of what once was.
I’ve sleepwalked through my life since the end of our time together. Here I am awake, on a plane hurtling over the Atlantic in the dead of night, to an island I’ve been running from for ten years; one that houses the memories of my family that has since fallen apart, be it by death or by choice. The island on which I first felt that restless, terrifying sense of claustrophobic panic. The island that was the first place to see me falter; when my anxiety was too great and the night too long and drinking too much felt like the only thing I could do to stay afloat. This was the place that I only felt brave enough to willingly return to with him by my side, as if to say, I’m ok now. I’m better.
And, as fate would have it, once we decided on the trip, once I made plans and told family and spent money I didn’t really have, we dissolved; like piles of sand when the tide comes in. I was the only thing left standing, as my pillars of love and support and comfort melted away. Me and this ticket.
The month that followed was a blur of bottles of wine and sleepless nights and friends trying their hardest to help me forget. I called him more nights than I didn’t, and, to his credit, he almost always picked up. I can’t find the energy to be angry with him. The only passionate feeling within me is a desperate wish that I had never met him at all; that I could save myself from the deep pain that inadvertently follows great love. I wish I could erase it all. So, instead, I stay up and pour over what’s been said and what went wrong until the sun crests the skyline.
Images of us come racing back into my thoughts and the panic sets in. I start to dread what I’ve done by coming here when I catch sight of my best friend, sitting a few rows back. We met in early September when we were 17, on the first day of university, and ten days later I decided she’d be my maid of honour. Someone once told me that heartbreak has silver linings, and if that’s the case, mine is our friendship. She has unfalteringly loved me for who I am since the moment that I met her, especially in the moments when I haven’t been able to do that for myself. She bought a ticket because I told her I couldn’t go it alone — no questions asked.
So, we’re in this together now, on our way to stand beside the ocean for ten days. We both have things we want to escape in our sabbatical from the city. We both acknowledge this; our unspoken truth. We’ve both have felt lost since we crossed the stage at graduation and had to ask ourselves, What next? We moved to the city together, to find adventure, or purpose, or meaning, or something. So far we’ve come up empty handed. So we set off, in a determined silence. For what, we don’t know.
We spend our days by the water, doing a lot and not very much at the same time. We hike along the coast, we listen to live music, we watch whales breach as we sit on the beach and drink wine. We wake up and drink coffee, perching on slippery rocks, watching the tide come in as we smell the salt air and hear the boats coming in. We cry on hiking trails in towns we’ve never heard of before. We drive to every fishing community we can find and muse about what life was like in the past and present. We do most of this in moments of comfortable silence; when you’ve known each other for so long, words don’t need to fill the air. There are none of the demands that the city usually imposes on us — no deadlines, no expectations, no obligations. Nobody is watching us. We exist in a space that doesn’t bend to the will of timing and results. We soak it in, hungrily.
On the fifth day, we sit on the beach in a tiny community with less residents than my apartment building in the city. The town has housed my family for centuries: fishermen and their children that made their lives along these shores; people who had little and worked hard and never, ever looked back. Maybe this was because they couldn’t afford to take the time to second guess, or maybe it was because they had a gene I’ve inherited, one that makes us scared to reflect, to find out that we’re wrong. But either way, forward they looked, onward they fought.
As we share a bottle of wine by the water, wrapped warmly in sweaters and jeans to avoid the cold Atlantic chill, we break our silence. We talk about what we need to do when we return to the city. I swear to study harder than I ever have for my upcoming entrance exam, and she swears to chase her dreams of working at a gallery unrelentingly. We talk excitedly about how hard we will work in the fight for fulfilment and happiness and how we won’t give up on ourselves or each other. As our voices rise with excitement and the sun sets, the future looks so bright. For the first time in a long time, he isn’t on my mind. I’m not replaying old conversations, charting the course for new attempts at the relationship, or crying over what has been said.
I used to feel as though I could only go back to the island if I re-emerged, shiny and new, from the city. I thought that I had to be a different person to be there — happier, more successful, more beautiful, in a relationship — and to show that I was worthy of love. None of that matters anymore, though. I went back, broken and battered, and the old anxieties that chased me while I lived on the island in decades past are gone.
I can breathe, and I do. I breathe the salty air for hours, enjoying every luxurious rise and fall of my chest. I laze on the sand and think to myself, I may never leave. Only, I know I will at the end of the week. I know that I will re-enter the ring in the city, and that I will with efforts doubled. I look over at my best friend, at the fire that is glowing in her eyes, and the only thing that matters in this moment is that we are standing side-by-side in front of the ocean, wind rippling through our hair, and we have our sights set straight ahead.
Sarah O’Flaherty is a writer from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and graduate of Queens University. She is also the co-host of S & M the Podcast.