Take Offs & Landing
September 30, 2011
Nashville, TN
My brother is an impressive planner. Not only did he coordinate a West Coat bachelor party for me from his East Coast apartment, but he managed to keep everything a surprise, meaning I had no idea of what to expect until the morning I showed up at the Nashville airport, as instructed, with nothing but a toothbrush and an overnight bag.
He gave me one crucial bit of information — my flight number — just hours before the plane was scheduled to depart. My weekend destination was a mystery until I matched my flight number to its corresponding line on the monolithic “Departures” grid. I soon learned that he had booked me on a four-hour United Airlines flight to Los Angeles where I would be joining him and my two groomsmen for an LA weekend. This jarring but exciting realization kept my mind sparked with curiosity until I was resting comfortably on the plane, my head leaning against the plastic wall of the aircraft. By the time we were airborne I was sound asleep.
It was a singularly stressful but productive period in my life; I had just moved from my home in the liberal center of New England to the buckle of the Bible Belt, my graduate studies were toggling between probably manageable and crushingly overwhelming, and I was trying vainly not to get tangled up among Middle Tennessee’s multiple highways. If that weren’t enough, I was planning a Florida wedding with a Boston fiancée from my new home in Tennessee. Once I was removed physically from the center of these new stresses, my body naturally gave in to its exhaustion and I was courting oblivion for the first time in months.
When I woke, jostled from my resting position by cloud turbulence, my reaction to what I saw was sheer panic accompanied by a flush of sudden weightlessness. My eyes were so close to the window that there was nothing of the interior cabin in my peripheral vision. I didn’t see the slick magazine covers in the seat pocket, the dullish gray armrests at my sides, or the abstract pattern on the blue seat cushion. Instead, what I saw upon waking was an impossible vision of the Earth — there was too much broad landscape, too many tiny bodies of water, and houses so small they were recognizable only in clusters.
I was seeing the ground from an entirely alien perspective and everything was wrong. I’d momentarily forgotten that I was sitting on a plane, forgotten the long wait at the gate, forgotten the multiple security checkpoints, forgotten the solo car trip to the long-term satellite parking lot. All I knew was the sick, terrible sensation that I was falling, falling, falling.
I’ve never had a fear of heights. In fact, I’ve jumped out of a plane safely before (if such a thing is possible) while snugly tethered to a more experienced skydiver. Heights don’t usually throw me. But in that moment of panic, all rational thought went out the proverbial window. I gripped the armrest tightly, my knuckles bone-white, and pressed the back of my body as deeply into the seat as I could manage. My survival instincts completely took over and I prepared myself for a truly rough landing from 10,000 feet above sea level.
But then, there was nothing. The flat landscape below didn’t rush up to catch me. The awful weightlessness subsided. Everything remained exactly where it was. As I relaxed my neck, I began to notice the interior details of the plane. The comfort of sanity returned. I wasn’t falling — I was flying.
The rest of the flight was uneventful and I made every effort to be fully present and engaged in each moment of the bachelor party. It was like no other weekend; the combination of great friends, good food, and all varieties of whiskey made for a fitting celebration of my years as a single dude.
After the wedding, the important parts of my life were ironing themselves out. I’d found a routine to manage the workload in my grad program, the highways of Nashville were becoming more intuitive to me, and my wife and I were reunited after enduring several months of a long-distance engagement. We’d hit a stride and were accomplishing things as a married couple that we’d never attempted or achieved as single people. But while I gained much in the frenzy of post-marriage activity — we scoffed at the idea of sedentary domestic bliss — I lost the luxury of doing everything on my own time and in my own way. Whereas I’d previously been a cautious and conservative planner, I was now confronting huge and pressing decisions that also affected the interests and well-being of my equal partner. There was no time for doubt, no room for second guesses, no place for an exit strategy: all of the hallmarks of my early- to mid-20s as I struggled with my emerging adulthood. I was completely submerged in a new phase of life that had no frame of reference.
I’ve gone through a handful of significant changes since the wedding. I withdrew from graduate school, survived a few scary weeks of unemployment, found a new full-time job, bought a home, started a business, reconnected with an energizing and transformative belief system, cultivated a new support network, and learned that “homeowner” is synonymous with “amateur handyman.“ The last year had been so defined by tough decisions, long talks, and last-minute reversals that I can only laugh at how drawn-out, strained, and ambivalent my decision-making process used to be. But these changes happened so quickly and so steadily that, looking back on my life before marriage, I get the same sense of vertigo and displacement that I experienced on that cross-country plane ride just over 12 months ago. I’ve become so far displaced from the person I was — mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically — that it’s difficult to remember the person I had been in calmer but shallower waters. I know that I’m happier with myself overall, less nervous around other people, and have more tangible reasons to be proud: a healthy marriage, two good jobs in a failing economy, a wholly unique small business, and a community of friends in a city where, at first, I only knew two souls. All of these things have been accompanied by lessons in living a happier, more productive, more meaningful life. But having come such a long way in such a short time, it still feels like I should be playing catch-up — as if I’ve overshot myself and need to retrace my steps in order to realign with some vague trajectory.
When I do find a few moments to rest — in between making s’mores, vacuuming the house for potential buyers, and looking after a roomful of kindergartners in the carpeted basement room of a church — I’m reminded of the stuff I gave up (willingly and happily, in most cases) in order to attain the quality and quantity of life that I’m living. A not-quite-dependency on cigarettes, entire long weekends to myself, metaphysical experiments with mind-expanding drugs, loud and brash beer-pong contests, cynical knee-jerk atheism, casual flings and unbalanced friendships, and a selfish sense of entitlement that was so severe I’m still terrified by its lingering presence. It’s pointless to stack these things up against what I’ve gained in return — the thrills of the former just don’t hold water against the stability and genuine accomplishments and healthy personal growth of the latter. But the swift departure of those vices and solitary pastimes has created a vacuum that forces me to reinterpret the way I define myself and view the world. I care about different things. I’m more discerning about how I spend time, money, and energy. And my relationships — with my wife, my friends, my family, and the rest of the world — have become a new priority. What I’ve learned is to listen to myself before I listen to others, and to give myself permission to grow beyond the limits of what’s comfortable and reasonable.
I like the person that I am now, but New Me is a different and almost unrecognizable person in many ways. And he’s coming so closely on the heels of Old Me that the two of us still cross paths sometimes. It’s not always comfortable and it’s usually pretty awkward. We’ll tip our hats to each other politely, each acknowledging the other’s presence but knowing we’re on irreversibly separate paths. And when this does happen, I remind myself that, even though I may feel like I’m 10,000 feet from where I thought I would be, I’ll always be exactly where I belong.
