Gravity

It physically hurt sitting at the Charles de Gaulle airport. I kept playing it over and over in my head. It was so clear and so vivid. I could picture him sprinting out of the hotel trying to find me to say goodbye just as I was getting on a train. I could see his desperate eyes looking for me in a crowded station. I could hear his voice calling my name and then I could feel his utter disappointment realizing I was gone. He was too late.

What broke my heart the most was I could sense he would be sitting behind that desk tonight reading my postcard and wondering when he'd see me through that door again. I told him I would be back....but God knows when I'd return. I didn't have a plan.

 

Taking off in a jet after a vacation, is the absolute worst feeling. Simply terrible. No matter what, you cannot befriend gravity. In fact you now hate gravity, seething over the thought that the only thing it will do is pull you down back home. You can’t seize the rush and the rapid speed that’s forcing you up and away faster and faster. Soon we find ourselves high in the sky coursing through the air. There is no turning back.

It was back to reality now, and it wasn’t going to be a movie ending. He wasn’t running through the airport frantically searching for me. I felt so numb. Was I clear enough? I never told him how I felt, and our conversation was so messy because of our language differences. I had so much to take in. Still something in my heart told me it wasn’t the end.

It was only the beginning.

Author's Note

Reviews

[Richard🖌]

Gosh, Kathryn!
This is so tangibly felt I want to jerk her off the plane and send her back, to delete your lines, words, and paragraphs and make it all different … how genuinely touching and poignant it feels!

All my hopes and excitements are jumping up and down, yelling "YES!!!"

[Kathryn Smith]

Aw, I remember this! Walking out of that hotel in the morning was so hard to do. I remember the way the air smelled and how attached I had become to Paris.