After the events detailed in our last installment...
I proceeded back to the house, finally arriving around 1:00 am. The events of the following hours remain something of a blur. I do remember at one point or another in the cold, pure hours of the morning, in an almost catatonic state, standing on my bathroom scale with each of my suitcases, attempting to get each one under the regulation 50 lbs for Air France. Followed by me frustratingly getting off and proceeding to play musical chairs with articles of clothing, arbitrarily grabbing handfuls of rolled clothes and transferring them from bag to bag, praying I hit those magic numbers.
At long last, I zipped up my last bag, each perfectly balanced and each under the maximum weight limit, just as the alarm I had set last night, naively assuming I would sleep at some point before an 8-hour trans-Atlantic voyage, began to slowing ooze the soothing tones of NPR into my room...
Not long after, I exchanged sweet-sorrow partings with my Mother, as she not-very-subtly attempted to slip me an extra $100 for the trip. <3
Eight hours to go until I had to leave for the airport.
As much of a slobbering, incoherent zombie as I knew I would be if I didn't get any sleep, I couldn't for the life of me make it happen. Maybe it was excitement, maybe it was my body thinking I was back in college during an all-nighter and sending me an Incredible Hulk-style adrenaline rush. Whatever the reason, eight hours passed and I finally set out to pick up my Dad (my traveling/materiel gathering buddy) and take to the skies on my way to Her Majesty's Realm.
Eight hours in Coach can be rough. Eight hours in Coach sitting next to a 5-year old with Tourette's Syndrome when you're just about to fall asleep for the first time in 24 hours...
In the end, I was determined not to let a harsh flight get the better of me. After all, I was in Paris...
Dad and I were on the same flight into Charles de Gaulle, but we had to take separate flights into Birmingham, his leaving two hours before mine, leaving me with two hours to kill in the airport...How bad does that sound?
To answer that question, if I ever direct a production of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, I'd replace the Second Empire furniture with the orange and yellow bench seats of Gate 24.
This is not entirely a judgement on Charles de Gaulle Airport, the clientele who frequent it, or the city of Paris at large. Granted, the young woman selling me my Coca-Cola at the cafe seemed to lose all patience with me the minute she heard my slightly American-accented "Bonjour" and the old French gentleman sitting uncomfortably close to me in the terminal were slightly irritating. But the real reason those two hours in the terminal were so unpleasant can be found at a slightly closer source. In other words, to adjust that famous Sartre quote:
"L'enfer est soi-même." "Hell is one's self."...
I say this because it was during those two hours, I was quite possibly the most uncomfortable I have been in years. As I awkwardly sat in my molded plastic chair, snapping my head back every five minutes after realizing I had been drifting off to sleep, wiping away the sweat that made me feel as though I had a thin layer of slime over my entire body, Doubt began to roll in. The doubt that seems to cross the mind of everyone after they make an important life decision. Doubt took a seat right next to me in the terminal, cleared its throat, and slowly began its disjointed dialogue with my brain.
"I just don't know. Eric, what are you doing here? Are you really making the right decision? Here you are, leaving Pittsburgh, the city you love, along with all your friends and family, to go to school for a year in a city you know next to nothing about. You're gonna miss them all so much! Why are you even going to this school? How did you even get into this school? You're a terrible actor! Who do you think you're fooling? Who do you think you are, anyway? YOU SUCK, ERIC!!!"
"L'enfer est soi-même."
Considering the fact that I'm sitting in my apartment in Birmingham writing this right now and not still huddled on the carpeted floor of Charles de Gaulle Airport slowing rocking in a fetal position muttering and weeping, it goes without saying that I was able to work my way through these feelings. My confidence has been fully restored and I eagerly await the beginning of the school year.
What managed to pull this stone off from around my neck? Will our hero still be dashed to pieces on the jagged rocks of his own subconscious?...Well, it's late and I'm far too exhausted to type all that up now. :p
Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion of the "Burgh to the Brum" saga. Coming soon to a Blog-o-Sphere location near you.
Cheerio, n'at.
Haha, the disjointed dialogue is similar to the one I had last year, too funny. Things start to make more sense once you finally catch up on sleep and see what's ahead more clearly than what's behind.
ReplyDelete