The Departure

Things never seem to set in for me at the right moment.  Of course I could not muster enough genuine feeling to cry as I said goodbye to everyone I had known on that island for so many years.  I couldn't give one final gesture to show that I really cared, that the time spent with them had an impact on me and it would be hard to leave them despite my excitement to start out on my own.  Instead my eyes were dry and I just smiled sadly as we parted ways, heart still oblivious to the profound changes which were about to occur.  It was on the drive to the airport with my brothers and my dad.  It was as we wove through winding roads and passed by the geometric sugar cane fields, through the Okinawan cityscape and past crowds and buses and villages that I realized I was leaving my own secret garden, my paradisiacal childhood haven which had been my wonderland in the most crucial years of my life.  I wondered if the kids who came to college from just a few states away felt like this.  I wondered if the pilgrims felt like this.
I pulled it together long enough to fumble with paperwork and security checks and eventually say goodbye to my family--but only for that long.
Mine was one of the ghetto terminals where I had to go down an escalator and the wifi could not reach down there while we waited for a bus to take us to the plane.  I snapped a photo of the nearly empty gate between choked sobs and tried to busy myself with instagram to keep from crying out in anguish in front of the scattered strangers.  I tried to busy myself with the playlist I had created the night before just for the trip and with the bag of kettle chips I just purchased.
That was the last time I allowed myself to cry.  Through the mazes of people and the long flights and shouting airport employees, I knew I wanted to start the first day of the rest of my life with head held high, shoulders back and teeth grit.